Speaker 1: Sherbel is not really alarmed by anything at this stage.
Speaker 1: He's writing out his speeding ticket in his notebook in
Speaker 1: triplicate on the roof.
Speaker 2: Of the car, and suddenly up jumps mister Gould, and
Speaker 2: he's got a handgun in his hand. He's pointing it
Speaker 2: at the policeman. Respectable, married, no criminal record. He seemed
Speaker 2: hardly the sort of citizen you'd expect to be driving
Speaker 2: around with sawnoff guns, an imitation pistol, five hundred rounds
Speaker 2: of AMMO, and a fatal habit for bailing up policemen.
Speaker 2: I'm Andrew rules his life in crimes.
Speaker 1: Today, I'm going to reach back into the past and
Speaker 1: tell the story of a man with a double life.
Speaker 1: His first name was Ian. He was known before we
Speaker 1: knew his full name, as the country banned. And that
Speaker 1: was because there were a series of bank robberies back
Speaker 1: in the mid to late eighties which we were obviously
Speaker 1: all pulled by the same lone wolf robber, but no
Speaker 1: one knew who it was. It was a mystery. There's
Speaker 1: a fair chance it might have stayed a mystery, except
Speaker 1: as happens, the robber ran into trouble, and this is
Speaker 1: what happened. It's winter of nineteen eighty eight. It's the
Speaker 1: twenty ninth of June, where a district up near Saint Arnold,
Speaker 1: up in central Victoria in the.
Speaker 3: Old gold Fields.
Speaker 1: It's crisp, it's cold, it's a bright sunny morning, and
Speaker 1: a local policeman, Wayne Sherbel, is going out on the
Speaker 1: road in his yellow Commodore to use the radar gun
Speaker 1: to catch speeding motorists.
Speaker 3: Of which there are a few.
Speaker 1: Up around those parts because there's long straight roads through
Speaker 1: the wheat country. And Wayne Sherwell went to a district
Speaker 1: called Kurri kWh Kurri and I hope that is the
Speaker 1: way it's pronounced. Is a blink and you'll miss it.
Speaker 1: Farm District, which is just really a pair of road
Speaker 1: signs on the road between Sannanad and Bendigo. Sherwell went
Speaker 1: to a spot about fifteen ks from Sannanad. It's about
Speaker 1: eight thirty in the morning and it was just another
Speaker 1: routine day in the life of a country traffic cop,
Speaker 1: not all that exciting. They're basically mostly raising revenue, as
Speaker 1: we all know. This day, in fact, he had arranged
Speaker 1: for a very boring day. He was supposed to go
Speaker 1: and meet a Road Transport Authority officer and spend the
Speaker 1: day observing how trucks were weighed on the official waybridge
Speaker 1: at nearby Charlton. But that very exciting day fell apart
Speaker 1: when the road transport authority fellow rang up and said,
Speaker 1: I can't do it today, We'll have to do it
Speaker 1: another day. So you're off the hook. You can go
Speaker 1: out catching speeding drivers. So Wine Sherwill went out to
Speaker 1: this spot fifteen cash from Snanad and he backed his
Speaker 1: yellow Commodore into a particular Heidi hole that he favored,
Speaker 1: and he sat there or stood there or whatever he
Speaker 1: did with his radar gun and he'd pin the passing
Speaker 1: vehicles if he thought they were speeding. By the time
Speaker 1: he pulled up his first one, it was about ten
Speaker 1: to nine in the morning, and he pulls up a
Speaker 1: motorist called Jacobs who was going too fast. Ten minutes later,
Speaker 1: at nine ten am, he warns two motorists against speeding.
Speaker 1: He didn't actually book them, but warned them. The next
Speaker 1: speeding driver not so lucky. At nine point fifteen that
Speaker 1: feller copped a speeding ticket. Then at nine forty five,
Speaker 1: So our hero has been on a job for about
Speaker 1: an hour. At nine forty five, another car approaches. It's
Speaker 1: a silver Mazda six to six hatchback. It's going towards
Speaker 1: an ARNT. It's going very fast. SHERBYL checks the radar
Speaker 1: reading it's doing one hundred and twenty eight case one
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty eight clicks, which is, you know, if
Speaker 1: not twenty eight k's over the limit, perhaps more it
Speaker 1: depends what the limit is there. When Mazda was about
Speaker 1: two hundred meters away, Wayne SHERBYL steps onto the bitchmen
Speaker 1: and waves at the driver because, as he said later,
Speaker 1: I like to give them plenty of warning. He indicated
Speaker 1: where to pull over, and the driver pulled over.
Speaker 3: SHERBYL.
Speaker 1: The copper thought for a second that the driver wasn't
Speaker 1: going to pull up, he did so. Sherwell notes that
Speaker 1: the front number plate is missing from the car. He
Speaker 1: notes that the driver is a man who's in his forties,
Speaker 1: probably who's alone, and SHERBYL, who's in his late thirties
Speaker 1: at this stage, walks over and says, would you pull
Speaker 1: up a bit further, sir, you're blocking the traffic, and the.
Speaker 3: Driver did deceive it. Asked.
Speaker 1: Sherwyl went through his usual routine. You know we've all
Speaker 1: been there. He walked around the door, he looked at
Speaker 1: the red oden thing, he looked at the back number plate.
Speaker 1: He wrote stuff down so on, and he asked the
Speaker 1: guy why he was speeding, if there was any reason,
Speaker 1: and the driver said no. Asked to produce his license,
Speaker 1: the driver said he didn't have it with him. He
Speaker 1: stepped out and walked across to the police card to
Speaker 1: check the radar reading. That was fine. Everything about him,
Speaker 1: from the car, which was just a late model Master,
Speaker 1: to his neat casual clothes and his beard. Neat beard
Speaker 1: just reflected an average motorist. He didn't look out of
Speaker 1: the ordinary in any way. The man looks at the
Speaker 1: radar reading and said, oh, it must be right comfortable, lot.
Speaker 1: You know you got me, You got me, guv And
Speaker 1: Sherwel produces his notebook and asked the man's name and address,
Speaker 1: as you would. He's done it a thousand times before,
Speaker 1: and it's just another one. He he called later that
Speaker 1: the man seemed to hesitate slightly and then he answered
Speaker 1: Philip Gould, and he spelt out the surname. He said
Speaker 1: his middle name was Roger, and he said that he
Speaker 1: lived at key Law Street in Bendigo noted its key
Speaker 1: Law which is the name of another suburber of town,
Speaker 1: which is interesting. Asked him about his driver's license, and
Speaker 1: the fellow says, look, I haven't got it, but I
Speaker 1: remember the number, and he recites a number, gives Sherwell
Speaker 1: a number, and Shewell writes it down. So then Sherwell
Speaker 1: does the right thing. He goes over to his police
Speaker 1: car radios D twenty four that's sent for police communications channel,
Speaker 1: and he says, I want the usuals. Here's the reggio,
Speaker 1: here's the license number, and he gives him a car
Speaker 1: number CV that would be Charlie Romeo Victor or whatever
Speaker 1: it is, six five seven, and then the name of
Speaker 1: Philip Gould. While this is going on, our driver, the
Speaker 1: alleged mister Gould, is making small talk about the weather,
Speaker 1: and he doesn't seem perturbed when the regio number comes
Speaker 1: up as belonging to a Master Dealership and had in
Speaker 1: fact been canceled the previous year nineteen eighty seven. Neither
Speaker 1: did he show any sign of concern when the license
Speaker 1: check also drew a blank. No one called Philip Gould
Speaker 1: had held a license except for a man born back
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty who would have been too old to
Speaker 1: be the man at the wheel of the Master. Somebody
Speaker 1: born nineteen thirty might have been twenty years older than
Speaker 1: this guy, something like that. Confronted with this, the driver
Speaker 1: said calmly that he had owned the car three months.
Speaker 1: None of this actually aroused Sherbel's suspicions until mister Gould.
Speaker 1: The so called mister Gould, admitted he had no identification whatsoever.
Speaker 1: The policeman follows him back to the Master to question
Speaker 1: him further. Then he sees that there's a radio scanner
Speaker 1: on the front seat of the car, and this probably
Speaker 1: rang a faint alarm bell. A radio scanner is used,
Speaker 1: of course, to listen to, among other things, police channels,
Speaker 1: or it can be used to listen to police radio.
Speaker 1: And it's not the usual thing that most people are
Speaker 1: driving around with, particularly if they haven't got any identification,
Speaker 1: and particularly if the car comes up as unregistered. SHERBYL Says,
Speaker 1: so what's your occupation? What do you do? The man says,
Speaker 1: I'm a vet, as in a vetinary surgeon. SHERBYL Said, well,
Speaker 1: you say you're a vet, but you don't have any
Speaker 1: idea on you. That's a bit strange, don't you think.
Speaker 1: The man says, oh, block, I'll look through a bag here,
Speaker 1: look through a belongings and see if I've got any
Speaker 1: letters or anything that show you to show them I'm
Speaker 1: a vet.
Speaker 3: I wait a a job.
Speaker 1: And he gets a briefcase and up and puts his
Speaker 1: hand in it. And meanwhile, Sherbel's not really alarmed by
Speaker 1: anything at this stage. He's writing out his speeding ticket
Speaker 1: in his notebook in triplicate on the roof of the car.
Speaker 1: And suddenly up jumps mister Gould, and he's got a
Speaker 1: handgun in his hand. He's pointing it at the policeman.
Speaker 1: Sherbel recalls that Gould changed character suddenly. His tone of
Speaker 1: voice had changed and had become very assertive and threatening.
Speaker 1: I was immediately scared for my life and I did
Speaker 1: as instructed, and I put both my hands on the
Speaker 1: roof of the car. SHERBYL tried to calm the attacker down. Now,
Speaker 1: Sherbyl his late thirties, but unlike a lot of police,
Speaker 1: he had done other stuff before he joined the force.
Speaker 1: As a youngster. He'd worked on cattle and sheep stations
Speaker 1: in the interior, and he'd worked manually in tough places
Speaker 1: with tough people, and so he'd knocked around a bit.
Speaker 1: Then he joined the army and he become a military policeman,
Speaker 1: and after that his stint in the army, he'd become
Speaker 1: a prison officer. And so he was not a shrinking violet.
Speaker 1: He was a strong man physically and mentally, and he
Speaker 1: dealt with tough guys before, and he dealt with danger before,
Speaker 1: and he had plenty of physical and mental courage, and
Speaker 1: he kept his cool. When this man has pointed a gun.
Speaker 1: It was actually a sawn Off twenty two. I think
Speaker 1: the guy was pointing at him. Sherbel's trying to calm
Speaker 1: this guy down, but the man keeps going. He reaches
Speaker 1: over and grabs Sherbel's revolver, his side Army's police revolver.
Speaker 1: So the stranger, the bad guy now has two handguns,
Speaker 1: one of which Sherwell knows for a fact is loaded
Speaker 1: and ready to go.
Speaker 3: It's deadly.
Speaker 1: That's his own revolver. And he said later, I thought
Speaker 1: it was now or never. I felt he was going
Speaker 1: to kill me. I spun around and I grabbed his
Speaker 1: right hand, which was holding my revolver, I grabbed it
Speaker 1: with my left hand, and I grabbed his left hand,
Speaker 1: which was holding his gun, with my right hand, and
Speaker 1: I'm trying to keep both barrels pointed away from me.
Speaker 1: And so this struggle starts, and you've got the policeman,
Speaker 1: scared but very keen to save his own life, grabbing
Speaker 1: hold of a man who's got a gun in each hand,
Speaker 1: and he's got his wrists and he's forcing those hands
Speaker 1: apart so that neither gun is pointing at him long
Speaker 1: enough to get him shot. This is a very tense situation,
Speaker 1: ladies and gentlemen, and it would give you nightmares for
Speaker 1: a long time, because it's very scary and you're not
Speaker 1: sure you can get out of it. And indeed, you
Speaker 1: would be thinking there's only one way out of it,
Speaker 1: that one guy gets shot or the other. It's a
Speaker 1: struggle to the death. There is no one else around,
Speaker 1: so they're wrestling on the side of the road. They
Speaker 1: both fall to the ground and googled. The bad guy
Speaker 1: falls on top of the policeman. At this time, says
Speaker 1: sherbyl All, my concentration was on keeping the firearms pointed
Speaker 1: away from me. I can recall seeing his finger through
Speaker 1: the trigger guard of my revolver. Sherbell put the webbing
Speaker 1: of his own finger between his forefinger and his thumb
Speaker 1: behind the hammer of the revolver, so that he couldn't
Speaker 1: fire and couldn't hit him. Several times, the barrels of
Speaker 1: both weapons were pointed at him, and he was sure
Speaker 1: that one of them would go off and kill him.
Speaker 1: The two men stopped wrestling long enough for the attacker
Speaker 1: to ask the policeman to hand over his gun and
Speaker 1: let him go, but Sherwell, the policeman said, I can't
Speaker 1: do that. If I lose my firearm, I lose my job.
Speaker 1: I've got four kids and a wife to support, so
Speaker 1: I can't afford to give up my gun and lose
Speaker 1: my job. Give it to me, mister girl, before things
Speaker 1: go too far. Very cool, underfire, our man, Sherbel. For
Speaker 1: a minute, it seemed as if that appeal might work.
Speaker 1: The man hesitated, but then started fighting again. Not a
Speaker 1: smart move, because one sherbyl was a bit younger, and
Speaker 1: a bit stronger and a bit fitter, and he was
Speaker 1: very frightened of being shot, and that adrenaline burst gave
Speaker 1: him extra strength for sure. Moments later he wrestles the
Speaker 1: saun of twenty two from the other guy. Then he
Speaker 1: manages to twist the revolver his own Smith and Wesson
Speaker 1: thirty eight from the man as well, so suddenly Sherbel
Speaker 1: the policeman has both guns. Sherbyll sticks the rifle in
Speaker 1: his own belt and he points his revolver at the
Speaker 1: ordering him to lie flat on the ground. Man refuses
Speaker 1: to do this. He also has got a bit of
Speaker 1: go about him and he won't hold his arm so
Speaker 1: that Sherwyll can handcuff him. Sherbyl starts towards the police
Speaker 1: guarter radio for help. The man blocks his way. Sherwyll
Speaker 1: says to himself, I don't want to get too close,
Speaker 1: and I don't want to get into another fighter, else
Speaker 1: he might get one of these back from me. He
Speaker 1: asked him several times to get out of the way,
Speaker 1: and when Gould walked towards him, saying go on shoot me,
Speaker 1: Sherwyll instead of shooting him, which shows you what a
Speaker 1: thoroughly decent man he was. He could have just shot
Speaker 1: him stone dead right then and would have been completely
Speaker 1: within his rights. Sherbyll actually backed the way and said
Speaker 1: stay where you are. He then fired a shot from
Speaker 1: his revolver into the air to try to scare the
Speaker 1: man off and hope that someone else around the place
Speaker 1: might hear it and call the police, you know, a
Speaker 1: farmer working in a paddock or whatever. The bad guy
Speaker 1: backs off a little bit, but he keeps saying, go on,
Speaker 1: shoot me, go on, shoot me. Sherwyll attempts to move
Speaker 1: to the back of the police car, at which time
Speaker 1: the bad guy tries to block him again. A car
Speaker 1: passes traveling west. As that car approached Gould, the batman
Speaker 1: turns and walks towards his master. Sherwell seizes the chance,
Speaker 1: grabs the radio microphone through the open window of the
Speaker 1: police car and calls Sananad seven two to Snanad urgent.
Speaker 1: And that was a message back to Sonana, but not
Speaker 1: a terribly distinct or complicated message, not a very distinct
Speaker 1: message because he couldn't really add any more. Then Sherwyll
Speaker 1: looks back at the Masda where the bad guy is,
Speaker 1: and you wouldn't believe it. What he sees makes him
Speaker 1: run around behind the police car for protection because mister
Speaker 1: Gould has now produced a sawn off shotgun. He didn't
Speaker 1: just have a sawn off rifle. He's got a sawn
Speaker 1: off shotgun and he grabs that and he's pointing it
Speaker 1: at Sherwell, who is scared for his life because a shotgun,
Speaker 1: particularly when it's sawn off, has a scatter gun effect,
Speaker 1: and he's going to cause terrible damage at close range
Speaker 1: and it is impossible almost to miss with such a weapon.
Speaker 1: The raises the shotgun, points it at sherbyl Sherwoll fires
Speaker 1: two quick shots from his pistol. The man disappears behind
Speaker 1: the Master. Sherwyl does the same behind the police gar,
Speaker 1: squatting down behind the engine block, hoping it will protect
Speaker 1: him if there's more shooting. He can hear the radio
Speaker 1: D twenty four on the radio calling to him saying
Speaker 1: where are you and you know Sherwyll whatever seven two,
Speaker 1: But because he can't reach it safely. After a while,
Speaker 1: Sherwyll screws up his nerve and he creeps along. He
Speaker 1: opens a driver's door and he reaches for the radio microphone.
Speaker 1: He put it on the bonnet and crouched again behind
Speaker 1: the engine block before calling D twenty four for help.
Speaker 1: He wasn't sure if the gunman was still there, but
Speaker 1: if he was, Sherwell was frightened that he was playing possum,
Speaker 1: that he was lying there with the shotgun waiting to
Speaker 1: get a chance to shoot him. So he's still very
Speaker 1: very nervous. Long story short, the Snana police realized that
Speaker 1: something bad has happened. Two coppers there jump in a
Speaker 1: car and speed out to this site, which is fifteen
Speaker 1: k's out of town. So as long as if they
Speaker 1: can get there in two minutes, it takes a while,
Speaker 1: and it is a long time if they're squatting behind
Speaker 1: a car thinking that somebody might shoot you with a
Speaker 1: sawn off shotgun. They know that Sherwill has been checking
Speaker 1: a silver masder because that call had gone in, and
Speaker 1: they know that the man when the Master gave his
Speaker 1: name as Philip Gould. That is all they know, not much.
Speaker 3: Use to them.
Speaker 1: Before they reach the spot where the cars are, there's
Speaker 1: another message from sherwel He says he's fired shots at
Speaker 1: the suspect, but doesn't know if he's hitting. The two
Speaker 1: policemen who've turned up park about one hundred meters away.
Speaker 1: One of them tells the other to go through the
Speaker 1: paddock and around in a looping arc to get behind
Speaker 1: the gunment so that they can sort of work out
Speaker 1: where he is and what he's doing and catch him
Speaker 1: to some extent in a crossfire to trap him. And
Speaker 1: that's what they do. Sherwell calls out, mister Gould, can
Speaker 1: you hear me? Mister Gould, can you hear me? But
Speaker 1: the man doesn't move or make a sound. A minute
Speaker 1: or so later the police creep up and they discover
Speaker 1: why he doesn't make a sound. It's because he's got
Speaker 1: a thirty eight bullet in his brain. One of Wayne
Speaker 1: Sherbyl's shots had hit the mark, which is probably a
Speaker 1: good thing. The police searched the masterne Not only had
Speaker 1: there been a sawn off rifle and a shotgun and
Speaker 1: a scanner, there's false ID. There's a leather cartridge belt
Speaker 1: with eighteen shotgun cartridges and five hundred and eighteen twenty
Speaker 1: two bullets. There's an imitation forty four caliber cold handgun
Speaker 1: and a nine millimeter cartridge. The shaken policeman didn't know
Speaker 1: who the dead man really was, but one thing was certain.
Speaker 1: The mysterious mister Gould was no bird watcher. So at
Speaker 1: this point the dead man is still unidentified. You know,
Speaker 1: police photographers come, forensic come, news, helicopters come. It's big news.
Speaker 1: Policeman shoots man, blah blah blah, great story, big story,
Speaker 1: but they don't know really who he is. As luck
Speaker 1: had it, the people who knew that car, that silver Master,
Speaker 1: we're watching the Channel ten news. Those people were a
Speaker 1: woman called Bev Turner and her two sons who were
Speaker 1: actually in Melbourne because they'd come down from Sheperdon with
Speaker 1: her husband, Ian Turner, her newish husband. When I say
Speaker 1: her sons, they're her sons, not his. They're his step sons.
Speaker 1: And she's not long been married to this guy in Turner,
Speaker 1: and they're living around Sheperdon and three days before this
Speaker 1: shootout he's brought them down to Melbourne for you to
Speaker 1: stay at friends or whatever while he goes off on
Speaker 1: one of his mysterious business trips. Now he's persuaded this
Speaker 1: woman he's married that he's got a lot of business interests.
Speaker 1: He owns buildings and properties and da da da da da,
Speaker 1: And she believes him because he often turns up with
Speaker 1: quite a bit of money and seems to be fairly
Speaker 1: well healed, and he's got a great line of patter,
Speaker 1: and in fact that is how he'd got her in thees,
Speaker 1: he big noted, and he carried large amounts of cash
Speaker 1: and so on and so forth. So she thought he
Speaker 1: was quite a successful businessman, but she wasn't absolutely certain
Speaker 1: what his businesses were apart from the story. He told
Speaker 1: her that he owned certain buildings in Melbourne and he
Speaker 1: got rent and so on and so forth, And he
Speaker 1: told her he'd been a film producer and a television
Speaker 1: producer at Channel seven and all this sort of stuff
Speaker 1: which had an element of truth about it. He had
Speaker 1: worked at Channel seven, but in fairly lowly roles. So
Speaker 1: Bev Turner and her boys are watching television. They see
Speaker 1: this car beside the road filmed. It's a Mazda six
Speaker 1: to six, and she thinks, that looks like the car
Speaker 1: we used to drive. And then she sees in the
Speaker 1: car with the filming, she sees the Scott Morone upholstery
Speaker 1: and a Morone overnight bag which looks very much like
Speaker 1: her husband. And so she's thinking, my god, that looks
Speaker 1: like that car we used to drive. That I thought
Speaker 1: I ain got rid of but that looks like he's
Speaker 1: gearing the car. My goodness me, So she thinks this
Speaker 1: coincidence is a bit much. One of her sons, obviously
Speaker 1: a teenager or whatever, rings a friend in Sheperdon and
Speaker 1: he says to the friend, John, John, have you've seen
Speaker 1: Ian my stepfather? And this blog says no, but I'll
Speaker 1: go around and have a look. So John drives around
Speaker 1: to Turner's house in Sheperdon. It was just on the
Speaker 1: edge of Shep. It was a house on a little
Speaker 1: fruit block with orchard trees. And he notices that, even
Speaker 1: though it's getting a bit late at night, that their
Speaker 1: Doberman dog is tied up to the random post and
Speaker 1: he thinks that's unusual. Usually that dogs around the back
Speaker 1: of his kennel at this time of night. And there's
Speaker 1: no sign of life, no lights, whatever, and he thinks
Speaker 1: this this is not quite normal. There's alarm bells ringing
Speaker 1: in his mind. So he rings Melbourne and he tells
Speaker 1: Bev Turner's sons what he'd found, and then he went
Speaker 1: to Shep police station and he told the officer on duty.
Speaker 1: He thought he knew who was driving the silver Masda
Speaker 1: that had been on the news and therefore he thought
Speaker 1: he knew who the dead guy was. But by this
Speaker 1: stage events were already catching up Bev Turner, the worried wife,
Speaker 1: had asked her friend to ring Bendigo Police about the Master.
Speaker 1: It was then the police knew who the dead man was.
Speaker 1: It was a stolen master. The dead man was Ian
Speaker 1: William Turner born the twenty fifth of July nineteen forty six. Respectable, married,
Speaker 1: no criminal record. He seemed hardly the sort of citizen
Speaker 1: you'd expect to be driving around with sawn off guns,
Speaker 1: an imitation pistol, five hundred rounds of AMMO, and a
Speaker 1: fatal habit bailing up policeman. And so the widow Turner
Speaker 1: was able to fill the police in on quite a
Speaker 1: remarkable story. She'd met Turner just a few years earlier,
Speaker 1: about five years earlier. She had two sons from a
Speaker 1: previous relationship. And she met this guy Daddy and onng
Speaker 1: and he seemed a smooth operator and a big time operator,
Speaker 1: and he had money and started dada and they got
Speaker 1: married and so on. And he'd told her that he
Speaker 1: had a trucking business and he had an office block
Speaker 1: in Albert Road, South Melbourne, and all this sort of stuff,
Speaker 1: and she never really thought to question those things. They
Speaker 1: lived in the country, and now and again he would
Speaker 1: have to take business trips. He would say, well, I've
Speaker 1: got to go and check this or that, and he
Speaker 1: used to tell her about the drivers of the trucks,
Speaker 1: and he had this whole line of patter. She was
Speaker 1: quite invested in this fantasy story that he told. And
Speaker 1: this guy Turner, it turns out, had always been somewhat
Speaker 1: of a fantasist. And so you know, when he worked
Speaker 1: at Channel seven, where he had a pretty basic job
Speaker 1: in the past, they called him Tickles because he had
Speaker 1: a funny laugh. Most people at work with him thought
Speaker 1: he was a big notor who told a strange blend
Speaker 1: of fact and fiction, and that he would big note
Speaker 1: about owning a boat or owning this or that, or
Speaker 1: all sorts of things that some people realized that he
Speaker 1: was really a bullshit artist. But he's a fantasist who's
Speaker 1: not just a harmless fantasist. He's a fantasist who collects guns.
Speaker 1: He's a fantasist who's willing to do crimes to subsidize
Speaker 1: his fantasies. So he pretends that he's got a trucking business,
Speaker 1: or he owns city buildings, but the reality is he's
Speaker 1: robbing banks to get money to pretend that he's doing
Speaker 1: good business. The bank jobs are way for him to
Speaker 1: support the fantasy in front of the woman that he's
Speaker 1: married and her sons, among others. It turns out when
Speaker 1: the police look through the records, they think, ah, there's
Speaker 1: a series of robberies here that this fellow fits perfectly.
Speaker 1: They just had dubbed this guy the country bannit. The
Speaker 1: first robbery had been at the Rutherglen A and Z
Speaker 1: Bank back in November eighty four, so this is what
Speaker 1: tweent and a half years earlier. That was just one
Speaker 1: month after Turner had moved to Shepperton. The next was
Speaker 1: at the nab at Rushworth, another little country town just
Speaker 1: big enough to have a bank in that era, June
Speaker 1: nine eighty five. Then that was followed by the state
Speaker 1: bank at Rutherglen back to rother Glen, just a different
Speaker 1: bank in October eighty five, and then the A and
Speaker 1: Z bank it's and Arnod in July eighty six. The
Speaker 1: last one was at Dimbula's State Bank on the eleventh
Speaker 1: of June eighty seven. So this fellow has been doing
Speaker 1: a bit more than one a year, but not many more.
Speaker 1: He's just been nailing one now and again when he
Speaker 1: needed the money. So it's not really a spree. It's
Speaker 1: pretty cool and calculated, and the police are certain that
Speaker 1: on the day that he was shot dead he was
Speaker 1: on the way to do another robbery. It sort of
Speaker 1: fitted his mo He had the guns with him, he
Speaker 1: was driving fast, which was not smart, but maybe he
Speaker 1: was late for an appointment that he had made or
Speaker 1: something before the shooting. Before he shot dead, police knew
Speaker 1: that the five robberies had totaled something like one hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty thousand dollars, and they knew it had been
Speaker 1: committed by the same man because of certain striking similarities.
Speaker 1: Each of the five banks, small country town, including the
Speaker 1: tour at Rushworth, all done by a man in his
Speaker 1: forties whose description was the same each time. His method
Speaker 1: was simple, brazen, un effective. In each case, he made
Speaker 1: a bogus appointment by telephone to see the manager about
Speaker 1: investments the Bandit would turn up just before closing time,
Speaker 1: neatly dressed, without any attempt at disguise, and he'd go
Speaker 1: in and shake hands with the manager and sit down
Speaker 1: with his briefcase, and then he produced a gun and
Speaker 1: say have a look at this. Staff were often locked
Speaker 1: in a rear room while the offender rifled the strong
Speaker 1: room and the tellis draws. Identical hand ties were used
Speaker 1: to tie up staff into of the robberies, and he
Speaker 1: used the same false name into the robbery, so that
Speaker 1: is a pretty good indicator that it was him. When
Speaker 1: he robbed the State bank at Rutherglen, one of his
Speaker 1: two rother Glenn robberies, the bandit pulled off an elaborate con.
Speaker 1: He posed as a telecom employee, working on the bank's
Speaker 1: phones for a week before finally bailing up the staff.
Speaker 1: Not a bad con, a little bit Ocean's eleven for Rutherglen.
Speaker 1: Because of this approach, where he didn't wear disguises, the
Speaker 1: police had a very accurate description of the balding, fair haired,
Speaker 1: genial looking man with the chubby frame and the distinctive chuckle.
Speaker 1: Every one knew Ian's laugh.
Speaker 3: His wife recalled later.
Speaker 1: Of course, everything that the police found at his house
Speaker 1: supported the idea that he had been a serial robber,
Speaker 1: because they found other weapons. They found hand ties, they
Speaker 1: found all sorts of stuff that were incriminating. What they
Speaker 1: didn't find was a whole.
Speaker 4: Stash of cash, which leads to the speculation by some
Speaker 4: that the secret of where he buried his money died
Speaker 4: with him, and that out there somewhere in Sheperdon or
Speaker 4: out in the countryside, somewhere between Rutherglen and Rushworth and Soananad,
Speaker 4: he buried a whole pile of cash.
Speaker 1: And there is another PostScript to the story, and that
Speaker 1: is what happened to our hero, Constable Wayne Sherbell, the calm, tough,
Speaker 1: sensible copper who did exactly the right thing, saved his
Speaker 1: own life and possibly someone else's by doing what he
Speaker 1: did and by shooting Ian Turner, who was obviously a
Speaker 1: very dangerous man. It took some time, but eventually the
Speaker 1: system caught up with Wayne Shrwell, and in the subsequent inquest,
Speaker 1: the coroner put it very plainly that Turner got himself
Speaker 1: killed by his own actions. The coroner said Constable Sherwell
Speaker 1: not only acted with exemplary restraint and self control, but
Speaker 1: he also remained mindful of the safety of those members
Speaker 1: of the public as motorists drove unwittingly into a theater
Speaker 1: of Mortal Kombat, Constable Sherwell has earned both respect and commendation.
Speaker 1: On the ninth of December nineteen ninety four, so this
Speaker 1: is six years later, Sherwell was presented with the Police
Speaker 1: Valor Medal in a quiet ceremony at the Police Academy,
Speaker 1: attended by family and a few friends. Three days later
Speaker 1: he was given a civic receptionists and armored and then
Speaker 1: it was official. Wayne Sherwell was a local hero. It
Speaker 1: just took the criminal justice system six years and two
Speaker 1: days to acknowledge it. Thanks for listening. Life and Crimes
Speaker 1: is a Sunday Herald Sun production for True Crime Australia.
Speaker 1: Our producer is Johnty Burton. For my columns, features and more,
Speaker 1: go to herold'sn dot com dot Au forward slash Andrew
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Speaker 1: soul at news dot com dot Au. That is all
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