Speaker 1: He was once driving down King Street, Essendon, and he
Speaker 1: said to his companion, the smartest criminal in Australia lives
Speaker 1: in this street. And the other blog said, who's that
Speaker 1: and he said Stan James, and the other fellow said,
Speaker 1: never heard of him.
Speaker 2: A judge who had.
Speaker 1: Been a defense lawyer for a lot of those crims.
Speaker 1: He said to me that it's hard to be the
Speaker 1: best standover man in town.
Speaker 2: If you've got.
Speaker 1: A bitten out of your ear, it's not good for business.
Speaker 1: I'm Andrew Rule. This is life in Crimes. This week
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about an old time crook that
Speaker 1: no one knew was a crook except for a very
Speaker 1: small circle of people. We can talk about him at
Speaker 1: long last, because finally he died. He died on October
Speaker 1: the twenty sixth, and the only reason we know that
Speaker 1: is that he's Golf Club, the only private golf club
Speaker 1: in the Western Suburbs, has put up a nice note
Speaker 1: saying that thirty year member Stan James has passed away
Speaker 1: and that he's a much loved husband of Lorraine and
Speaker 1: much loved father of Linda, which is exactly right. But
Speaker 1: Stan James was more than a suburban hacker. Stan James,
Speaker 1: although he hardly darkened the inside of a police station
Speaker 1: or a prison in decades, was thought to be one
Speaker 1: of the cleverest criminal minds this country's ever seen. And
Speaker 1: the person that used that description of him is a
Speaker 1: former leading investigator in the arm robbery squad from the past,
Speaker 1: a person who is currently overseas and who may not
Speaker 1: even know that his old adversary Stan James.
Speaker 2: Has passed on.
Speaker 1: But this particular senior detective. When I say a senior detective,
Speaker 1: I mean an officer, someone towards the top of the
Speaker 1: robbery squad business. He was once driving down King Street,
Speaker 1: Essendon and he said to his companion, the smartest criminal
Speaker 1: in Australia lives in this street. And the other blog said,
Speaker 1: who's that? And he said Stan James, And the other
Speaker 1: fellow said, never heard of him. He said, well, he's
Speaker 1: the time and motion man who helped plan the great
Speaker 1: Bookie robbery. And I believe he's been involved in plenty
Speaker 1: of other robberies as well, probably won every couple of
Speaker 1: years now. Even if that is overestimating the number of
Speaker 1: robberies that stan James had some knowledge of, there is
Speaker 1: no doubt that he was heavily associated with the Great
Speaker 1: Bookie Robbery, and that has gone down in Australian criminal
Speaker 1: history as one of the greatest tists since the Bush
Speaker 1: Rangers knocked off a stagecoach full of gold back in
Speaker 1: the bad old days. Of course, most of our listeners
Speaker 1: will be very familiar with the Bookie Robbery because it's
Speaker 1: something that.
Speaker 2: We refer to.
Speaker 1: But just for those who've forgotten, it happened in April
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy six. It was on a Wednesday. It was
Speaker 1: at the Victorian Club in Queen Street in Melbourne. The
Speaker 1: Victorian Club was where traditionally all the big Melbourne bookies
Speaker 1: or Victorian bookies would meet after race meetings to settle
Speaker 1: up money. This particular one was a bumper settlement of
Speaker 1: cash because it was a Wednesday after Easter and there'd
Speaker 1: been three major meetings over the Easter break, one on
Speaker 1: the Saturday, one on the Monday, one on the Tuesday,
Speaker 1: and those meetings were big. A lot of people had
Speaker 1: gone to them, and there was a poultice of money
Speaker 1: bet won and lost, and more than one hundred bookies
Speaker 1: had gathered at the Victorian Club to settle up and
Speaker 1: what they.
Speaker 2: Would do there was.
Speaker 1: The armored car would arrive from the armored car depot
Speaker 1: in North Melbourne and would bring in all the cash
Speaker 1: and that would be loaded in cash boxes. The cash
Speaker 1: would be actually in canvas bags. The canvas bags would
Speaker 1: be locked into these big sort of iron cash boxes
Speaker 1: and they would be trundled in from the armored car
Speaker 1: below by security guards who would put it on trolleys
Speaker 1: wheeled in, get on the lift, take it up to
Speaker 1: i think the second floor, and take it out into
Speaker 1: the caged area they had in the Victorian Club where
Speaker 1: the bookies would count their money and pay out people
Speaker 1: that they owe money to and take in money that
Speaker 1: they were owed. It was one of those sort of deals. Now,
Speaker 1: obviously the settlement day would be attempting target for an
Speaker 1: armed robbery, but the reason that had never been robbed
Speaker 1: in history before was that it was a reasonably secure place,
Speaker 1: or it seemed that way. It was upstairs in the
Speaker 1: city and there were some arm guards there who helped
Speaker 1: bring the money in, but also as an added insurance,
Speaker 1: and this was important. Normally, what would happen is that
Speaker 1: members of the arm robbery squad and or the major
Speaker 1: crime squad would turn up on settlement day. Now, these
Speaker 1: police would do this not so much as a favor.
Speaker 1: They'd probably be slung some cash to turn up. They
Speaker 1: acted as unofficial escorts for the money. They would turn
Speaker 1: up to the distribution of the cash. They would hang
Speaker 1: around while it was being done. And of course these guys,
Speaker 1: large men standing around in cheap suits, they would all
Speaker 1: be carrying their regulation issue in their belts or under
Speaker 1: their jackets or whatever. They be armed detectives there for
Speaker 1: settlement day normally, but on this particular day, this bumper day,
Speaker 1: when there's millions of dollars there, Guess what happened, and
Speaker 1: many people listening will know this. What happened was that
Speaker 1: a senior policeman, a man called Eric Jenetsky, God bless
Speaker 1: his soul, he sent at the eleventh hour. He sent
Speaker 1: the detectives who would normally turn up to the settlement
Speaker 1: off on a wild goose chase to an alleged robbery
Speaker 1: attempt down at Frankston or something like that, a long
Speaker 1: way out of Melbourne, and they were sent there late
Speaker 1: in the morning. Off they went, and so they didn't
Speaker 1: turn up on time for the settlement, and everybody thought, oh, well,
Speaker 1: that'll be fine. It'll go smoothly as it usually does.
Speaker 1: But amazingly, this was the day that the robbery are
Speaker 1: very well planned robbery Robbie that had been planned for
Speaker 1: many weeks or many months was enacted and unfolded. It
Speaker 1: was a brilliant robbery. It was based somewhat on the
Speaker 1: robberies pulled by the Wembley Gang in London. Over in England,
Speaker 1: these were the state of the art robbers over there.
Speaker 1: They would use stop watches, they used commando tactics. They
Speaker 1: were very organized, very well disguised, fast in, fast out.
Speaker 1: Knew exactly what they were doing. Always war gloves, always
Speaker 1: wore Bella Clavis, the whole thing, no mistakes made. And
Speaker 1: a very dashing Victorian crook called Raymond Patrick Bennett, but
Speaker 1: known to his criminal mates as ray Chuck because his
Speaker 1: original family name was Chuck. When he was born and
Speaker 1: bred in northeastern Victoria at Chiltern, his family name was Chuck,
Speaker 1: so most crooks call him that anyway. Raymond Patrick Chuck
Speaker 1: alias Bennett, probably planned.
Speaker 2: This robbery pretty well.
Speaker 1: He put together a team of robbers, other good arm
Speaker 1: robbers from around Melbourne. He had been in England where
Speaker 1: he had done a lot of jobs with the Kangaroo Gang,
Speaker 1: famous scallywag Australians over there. He'd in fact come back
Speaker 1: to Melbourne to tea up some robbers here and then
Speaker 1: went back to England and then came back and he
Speaker 1: took all these robbery guys on a training camp up
Speaker 1: to the bush outside of Canton. I think it was
Speaker 1: trained them all one of those areas up there, and
Speaker 1: he trained them up, got them off the booze, got
Speaker 1: him on the steak sandwiches or whatever, and water and
Speaker 1: cups of tea, and did exercises and all the rest
Speaker 1: of it boot camp stuff. And so it was that
Speaker 1: this was very well planned and.
Speaker 2: Very well executed.
Speaker 1: But it required somebody really smart, really organized to help
Speaker 1: organize this because there are a lot of moving parts
Speaker 1: in a big robbery. You've got half a dozen guys
Speaker 1: with guns. You've got to have a nus escape route.
Speaker 1: You've got to know how to get into the room quickly, swiftly, safely.
Speaker 1: You need everything sorted out so nothing goes wrong. And
Speaker 1: that required a particular sort of expertise. And Stan James,
Speaker 1: i am assured, was just the man. And I was
Speaker 1: told about Stan James by a racing identity a few
Speaker 1: years ago. This racing identity said to me, you should
Speaker 1: look up the old newspaper cuttings and you'll notice that
Speaker 1: in the months after the Great Bookie Robbery, a couple
Speaker 1: of people were charged over the bookie robbery, but they
Speaker 1: were subsequently acquitted. They were cleared, But three people were
Speaker 1: charged over the bookie robbery. One was Normy Lee. We've
Speaker 1: discussed him here at length. Norman Lung Lee was a
Speaker 1: very good crook, as they call him, who was also
Speaker 1: a dim sim manufacturer around Essendon, the sort of bloke
Speaker 1: that you probably didn't want to eat his dim sims
Speaker 1: in case they had tattoos. But the other two who
Speaker 1: charged with Normanly were two women. One was Normanly's common
Speaker 1: law wife, a woman called Lorraine Shirley Hogan who was
Speaker 1: thirty in nineteen seventy seven, just so we get this right.
Speaker 1: And the other one was another woman called Lorraine, which
Speaker 1: tells us just how common that name was in that era.
Speaker 1: And she was guess what she was, Lorraine Mary James.
Speaker 1: She was the ever loving wife of Stanley Ernest James.
Speaker 1: And that is the link which shows that the police
Speaker 1: had found these people with large amounts of cash that
Speaker 1: they couldn't really explain, and had charged them over handling
Speaker 1: proceeds of the bookie robbery. A magistrate subsequently decided generously
Speaker 1: that there wasn't enough evidence to send this up to
Speaker 1: a higher court, and so the magistrate discharged normally and
Speaker 1: the two and they walked. But it remains a fact,
Speaker 1: a legal fact, that all three of them were charged
Speaker 1: over the proceeds of the bookie robbery, and that would
Speaker 1: suggest that the police, way back in nineteen seventy six
Speaker 1: seventy seven, suspected that the James gang, that is, Stan
Speaker 1: and his wife Lorraine, were involved somehow in the Bookie robbery.
Speaker 1: So hooper Stan James, Well, he's a man of mystery.
Speaker 1: We even are having trouble finding a photograph of him
Speaker 1: because he was very camera shye, like his associate mad
Speaker 1: Dog Cox Russell Cox, not his real name, was notoriously
Speaker 1: camera shy. When he went to a wedding underwe wedding,
Speaker 1: the photographer would come around and photos would be taken,
Speaker 1: but suddenly his chair would be empty. He would go outside,
Speaker 1: he would go to the bathroom. He would not be photographed,
Speaker 1: and so there'd be five people at the table or
Speaker 1: thirteen people at the table, whatever. No sign of Russell.
Speaker 1: Same with Stanley. Very camera shy, and there's every chance
Speaker 1: that there is no photograph of Stanley Ernest James publicly available.
Speaker 1: Probably only his nearest and nearest have some snapshots which
Speaker 1: they're unlikely to.
Speaker 2: Make available to us.
Speaker 1: The fact that Stanley James died in the last couple
Speaker 1: of weeks means that we can now talk about him.
Speaker 1: So frankly, we've had to sit on this information about
Speaker 1: him for so long. But it's a chance to go
Speaker 1: back through a story which we've half told in the past.
Speaker 1: And the story we've half told in the past is
Speaker 1: about a house at fifty one King Street in Essendon,
Speaker 1: and that's the house that Stanley and his bride Lorraine.
Speaker 2: Bought shortly after the Great Bookie Robbery.
Speaker 1: Amazingly, they came up with the money to buy that
Speaker 1: house in I think early nineteen seventy seven and if
Speaker 1: not late seventy six, but it was certainly in the
Speaker 1: months after the Bookie robbery they bought the house at
Speaker 1: fifty one King Street, Essendon. In those days, King Street
Speaker 1: tended to have these old weatherboard houses built. I think
Speaker 1: between the Wars sort of twenty thirties era, and this
Speaker 1: was one of the older ones. It was a sort
Speaker 1: of a simple double story house, and double story only
Speaker 1: in this way. It had a tall gable and you
Speaker 1: could get up through a manhole in the bathroom, and
Speaker 1: when you got up into the roof space, it was
Speaker 1: revealed that there were floorboards that had been laid over
Speaker 1: the roof joists, so you could walk around up there.
Speaker 1: And so what you had was not literally a double
Speaker 1: story house, but a single story house with a very
Speaker 1: cavernous roof space with flooring added. So that was like
Speaker 1: a giant attic or storeroom. And this is the interesting thing.
Speaker 1: After the Great Book of Robbery in nineteen seventy six,
Speaker 1: the Bookie robbers, those who were known to have or
Speaker 1: suspected to have pulled this robbery. The six gunmen who
Speaker 1: actually went in and did the robbery, plus their helpers.
Speaker 1: There was a guy to drive the van that took
Speaker 1: the money. There was another guy who jammed the lift
Speaker 1: with a chair in the Victorian club. There were others
Speaker 1: who know, somebody else supplied a venue to count the money.
Speaker 1: There were probably you know, seven, eight nine people heavily involved,
Speaker 1: plus Stanley. Those guys came under great pressure from other crooks.
Speaker 1: And we are going to call the other crooks the
Speaker 1: toe cutters. And they were in no particular order. There
Speaker 1: was the Cane brothers in Melbourne who were standover guys
Speaker 1: in Melbourne. Brian Kane, good standover man, golden gloves, boxer,
Speaker 1: a bit of a gunman, didn't like guns, but carried
Speaker 1: one or had one carried for him often. His brother
Speaker 1: Leslie Kane, who was very violent guy, extremely violent, very tough,
Speaker 1: very fierce wild. And they had a third brother called Raymond,
Speaker 1: I think his name was Ray Kane, known as Mussels.
Speaker 1: He wasn't as well known as the other two, but
Speaker 1: they were a very tough standover guys around town. And
Speaker 1: they had a sort of a following in their own
Speaker 1: circles of painters and dockers and that sort of crowd
Speaker 1: that went to the boxing and races and two up
Speaker 1: and all that sort of stuff. And I think Brian
Speaker 1: Kane collected money from pubs and speed bookmakers and two
Speaker 1: up games and all the rest of it, as you might.
Speaker 1: When the big robbery came off, there was rising hostility
Speaker 1: between opposing camps of crims and the guys that had
Speaker 1: pulled the robbery. They were well known reasonably quickly because
Speaker 1: while they were pulling the robbery at the Victorian Club,
Speaker 1: one of them, who was striding back and forth with
Speaker 1: a machine gun to keep all the bookies lying on
Speaker 1: the carpet face down, one of them had spoken a
Speaker 1: couple of times and he said to Ambrose Palmer. Ambrose
Speaker 1: Palmer was there on that day. Ambrose Palmer was not
Speaker 1: a bookmaker. He was a former league footballer and former
Speaker 1: boxer who was a very well known boxing trainer in
Speaker 1: Melbourne in the sixties and seventies. And Ambrose Parmer trained,
Speaker 1: among other people, that great champion Johnny Famershon among others,
Speaker 1: and he was well known to train fighters at the
Speaker 1: gym's at Festival Hall underneath Festival Hall, and a lot
Speaker 1: of that Millieure the boxing gym Millieu.
Speaker 2: Rubbed shoulders with crooks.
Speaker 1: A lot of crooks went to the fights, and a
Speaker 1: lot of fighters knew crooks and was one of those things.
Speaker 1: The guy was the machine gun, who of course had
Speaker 1: a mask on, is walking back and forth keeping everybody
Speaker 1: lying down during the robbery while his mates are busy
Speaker 1: cutting open the locks on the cash tins and stuffing
Speaker 1: the cash bags into bigger bags and so on, and
Speaker 1: he's forcing everybody to keep their heads down. And when
Speaker 1: Ambrose Palmer looked up, he said something like and that
Speaker 1: means you too, Ambrose, meaning he knew who Ambrose was,
Speaker 1: and Ambrose Palma recognized the guy's voice.
Speaker 2: Ambrose forgot to mention.
Speaker 1: This to the police when the police he breathed them later,
Speaker 1: but funnily enough, he got his memory back when he
Speaker 1: was back at the gym a few days later training fighters,
Speaker 1: and he mentioned to somebody that he thought he heard
Speaker 1: so and so's voice during the robbery, and of course
Speaker 1: word leaked immediately.
Speaker 2: That it was this guy. This guy, this.
Speaker 1: Guy, and the whole underworld would have had a fair
Speaker 1: idea of who done it, because that's the way the
Speaker 1: underworld is. It's a village, it's a small business, and
Speaker 1: only a handful of specialists had the nerve and the
Speaker 1: ability and a wherewithal to get away with a big
Speaker 1: robbery like this. There's just not many to choose from.
Speaker 1: And the guys who didn't do it knew very well
Speaker 1: it wasn't them, so they knew probably who did do it.
Speaker 1: And so we've got this situation where you've got rival
Speaker 1: gangs eyeing each other off, and the toe cutters, as
Speaker 1: we'll call them, would include the cane boys, because those
Speaker 1: stand over guys who probably resented the fact they weren't
Speaker 1: cut into this crime, that they weren't a.
Speaker 2: Part of it.
Speaker 1: There would be rogue coppers who we need not name,
Speaker 1: but let's name a couple. Paul William Higgins. Paul William Higgins,
Speaker 1: I think would be one who'd be qualify as a
Speaker 1: standover copper who was a crook and a very tough guy.
Speaker 1: He would probably count as a toe cutter who'd be
Speaker 1: very inclined to stand over crooks if he could abduct
Speaker 1: them and threaten them and put guns in their ears
Speaker 1: and in their mouth forced them to give up the cash.
Speaker 1: There would be various robberies and aja crime squad detectives.
Speaker 1: The only ones we're talking about would be ones who
Speaker 1: are now dead. Of course, the ones who were alive, clearly,
Speaker 1: we're very honest. The dead ones who were crooks. There's
Speaker 1: a few of those who might have been partial to
Speaker 1: debriefing crooks and checking out where the money had gone
Speaker 1: and perhaps trousering some.
Speaker 2: Of it for their troubles, probably for charity.
Speaker 1: Or for the Policeman's Ball or something like that. And
Speaker 1: then there was a fellow good Linus Patrick Driscoll, and
Speaker 1: he was a very nasty piece of work. They Colleen
Speaker 1: Jimmy the Pom, but he was actually more Irish. But
Speaker 1: he'd gone, i think from Ireland to England, and from
Speaker 1: England he'd come to Australia to the colonies to spread
Speaker 1: his particular brand of ill will. And he was a
Speaker 1: very tough, mean man. I think he used to do
Speaker 1: things like work as a barman in pubs, but meanwhile
Speaker 1: he would kidnap less a gangster us and torture them
Speaker 1: to get their money. He was a toe cutter. He
Speaker 1: literally used to get bolt cutters and cut people's toes
Speaker 1: off in order to get them to reveal where the
Speaker 1: money was. And these were the sort of people who
Speaker 1: came after the bookie robbers. And Raymond Patrick Bennett alias
Speaker 1: ray Chuck was sort of the leader of the Bookie robbers,
Speaker 1: and he thought he would get in first. He could
Speaker 1: read the play and he thought I'll get in first.
Speaker 1: And he and a couple of his mates, and I'm
Speaker 1: going to say it was a mister prender Gaston and
Speaker 1: mister Michelson, one of whom's no longer with us. They
Speaker 1: went out to one Turner I believe, to a flat
Speaker 1: in Monturna or an apartment where Les Kane and his
Speaker 1: wife Judy and their two little kids were sort of
Speaker 1: living there quietly, well away from their usual house in
Speaker 1: the suburbs. Les Kane knew that trouble was brewing, so
Speaker 1: he took his wife and kids out to the outer
Speaker 1: suburbs because there was basically a war had been declared.
Speaker 1: There had been an incident in a Richmond pub which
Speaker 1: had really ignited this underworld war on what it was,
Speaker 1: it was a fight between I think Vinnie Mickelson and
Speaker 1: Brian Kane. It was certainly Brian Kane on the receiving
Speaker 1: end because in this barroom brawl, a very savage barroom brawl,
Speaker 1: Brian Kane, who was a dab hand with his fists,
Speaker 1: he was a very good fighter. The street fighter opposing
Speaker 1: him and I think it was Mickelson bit a piece
Speaker 1: from Brian Kane's ear, quite a large chunk, which embarrassed
Speaker 1: Brian Kane. Later he grew his hair down over his
Speaker 1: ears to cover up the scar, but as a judge
Speaker 1: said to me many years later, a judge who had
Speaker 1: been a defense lawyer for a lot of those crims.
Speaker 1: He said to me, he said, it's hard to be
Speaker 1: the best standover man in town. If you've got a
Speaker 1: bit bitten out of your ear, it's not good for business.
Speaker 2: He put his.
Speaker 1: Finger right on it that once. If you're a big
Speaker 1: time tough guy who's a standover man, you can't really
Speaker 1: go around showing people that you've had a piece bitten
Speaker 1: out of your ear, because it means you are not
Speaker 1: the toughest guy in the Valley of death. You are
Speaker 1: the second toughest. And so it meant war, and it
Speaker 1: meant the Caine brothers were against the.
Speaker 2: Bookie robbers, and the bookie.
Speaker 1: Robbers got in against les Kin, who was very dangerous,
Speaker 1: very mean. They went out there to the place in Montana.
Speaker 1: Les Kane and his wife, Judy, and the little kids,
Speaker 1: two little kids, had been out for a Chinese meal,
Speaker 1: which just shows you that Chinese food can get you killed.
Speaker 1: It's not just the MSG. They got home to the
Speaker 1: Monturna flat and Judy Kane noticed that their little dog,
Speaker 1: their little dashound. I think it was a little short
Speaker 1: legged dog, a miniature dashound. I'm gonna say his name
Speaker 1: was Freda. Might be wrong, might be wrong, but anyway,
Speaker 1: his name doesn't matter. And she noticed that. She thought
Speaker 1: she'd left the dog in the backyard or in the house,
Speaker 1: and here it is outside the front door of the house,
Speaker 1: and it's been put up on a chair that's sitting
Speaker 1: on the porch or on the veranda beside the front door.
Speaker 1: And she thought, that's funny. That little dog can't jump
Speaker 1: that high. He can't jump up onto a chair. His
Speaker 1: legs are too short. Somebody must have lifted him up
Speaker 1: and set him on the chair. And this is sort
Speaker 1: of going through her mind, but she's not taking a
Speaker 1: lot of notice. She just thought that's funny. Maybe somebody
Speaker 1: walking past us seeing me. I don't know. Anyway, they
Speaker 1: opened the door, they go in and guess what. There's
Speaker 1: three masked men with automatic weapons. They've actually got twenty
Speaker 1: two rifles that have been modified so that they shoot
Speaker 1: like machine guns. And the two of the guys grabbed
Speaker 1: Le's cane and dragged him into the bathroom, and the
Speaker 1: other one gets Judy and the kits and shoves them
Speaker 1: into a bedroom and slams the door, so they can't
Speaker 1: hear or see what's happening. They shoot les Cane in
Speaker 1: the bathroom. They shooting comprehensively in the head and elsewhere,
Speaker 1: lots of bullets. They dragged him down the hallway, so
Speaker 1: there's blood and brain matter and stuff all the way
Speaker 1: down the hallway, and they liim next to the front door.
Speaker 1: And then they apparently backed his own car, pink Food Futura.
Speaker 1: They must have got the keys for it, and they
Speaker 1: back it in and they drag his body out and
Speaker 1: put it in the car. I think there was a
Speaker 1: fourth man out there doing driving for them. And the
Speaker 1: fourth man may well have been a blow called Dennis
Speaker 1: Smith alias Greedy Smith, a big fat guy who was
Speaker 1: a very well known crook, very well liked by certain
Speaker 1: other crooks around town. And he might have been the
Speaker 1: fourth guy in the hit team. And here's the thing.
Speaker 1: The pink Ford Futura and les Kane's body were never
Speaker 1: ever found, never seen again. The suggestion is that both
Speaker 1: the body and the car were taken, possibly to a
Speaker 1: car crushing plant in the Northern suburbs, where they were
Speaker 1: crushed up to the size of a bread bin something
Speaker 1: like half a meter by half a meter by half
Speaker 1: a something like that. And once that happens to you,
Speaker 1: there's not a lot left, particularly in those days pre dnaight.
Speaker 1: So the smart money says that's what happened. The car
Speaker 1: was melted down with the body in it, which would
Speaker 1: mean no sign of anything, and presumably the guns as well,
Speaker 1: a whole lot never found. Judy Kane woman, I've met,
Speaker 1: a very impressive woman that most.
Speaker 2: People really like. She's well liked.
Speaker 1: By all who know her, including police. She was staunched
Speaker 1: the way that underworld wives and mothers were in that era,
Speaker 1: and she called up her in laws, the dead husband's parents,
Speaker 1: and they all joined together and they cleaned up the
Speaker 1: entire house. They cleaned up the blood and everything else,
Speaker 1: and they said nothing. They said nothing to anybody. And
Speaker 1: it was only when police got to hear about it
Speaker 1: from other sources and came looking for les that she
Speaker 1: said anything about anything. But she certainly did not name
Speaker 1: the perpetrators, although she was pretty sure she knew who
Speaker 1: a couple of them were, because she mixed in those circles,
Speaker 1: and she knew some of these guys' voices and the
Speaker 1: way they walked and the way just the way they looked.
Speaker 1: Even if they had a mask on, she'd know them.
Speaker 1: She's pretty sure she knew who they were. It became
Speaker 1: a parent of the police who'd done it. The police
Speaker 1: couldn't nail anybody for it. Meanwhile, Raymond Patrick Bennett, ray Chuck,
Speaker 1: he thought the best player to be was in jail
Speaker 1: on a minor charge over the ensuing time. The Leskane
Speaker 1: murder has happened in nineteen seventy eight, which is, let's say,
Speaker 1: eighteen months after the Great Bookie Robbery. Bennett decides that
Speaker 1: the situation is so hot after that that he'd be
Speaker 1: safer in jail, and so he knows he's got a
Speaker 1: little warrant out for him over some relatively minor offense,
Speaker 1: and he hands himself into his lawyer or whatever, and
Speaker 1: he goes to the watchhouse. He goes through the City Court,
Speaker 1: the old Melbourne Magistrates Court, which is that beautiful old
Speaker 1: building where ned Kelly was sentenced back in eighteen eighty
Speaker 1: and its opposite the Russell Street Police Headquarters Russell Street
Speaker 1: Police Station as it was.
Speaker 2: He's led through there.
Speaker 1: I think it was November the fourteenth, was the week
Speaker 1: after the Melbourne Cup, after the nineteen seventy nine Melbourne
Speaker 1: Cup which was won by Hyperno. And he is led
Speaker 1: out of the cells into the Court one and then
Speaker 1: the magistrate, Darcy Durgan says, mister Bennett or mister Chuck,
Speaker 1: mister Bennett, I think they call.
Speaker 2: Him, you've got to go up to Court twelve.
Speaker 1: And then two detectives from the robbery squad from Memory
Speaker 1: accompanied him. I think it was a mister Strang and
Speaker 1: a mister Glare. With the detectives, they accompanied the prisoner
Speaker 1: through the body of that court Court one, where I
Speaker 1: was sitting as a very young reporter, and they led
Speaker 1: him out and upstairs to I think Court twelve it
Speaker 1: was called. And I was just about to follow him
Speaker 1: up there to cover that case when we heard the
Speaker 1: shots bang bang bang. Now I think three shots are
Speaker 1: a fusilated shots at least three, and I knew it
Speaker 1: was a gun, and I knew it was a only
Speaker 1: heavy calibar, and I knew it wasn't a car backfiring.
Speaker 1: You can always sort of forgive one bang. You think
Speaker 1: it could be a car, or it could be something
Speaker 1: dropping somewhere, it could be from a construction site. But
Speaker 1: when you go bang, bang bang, it's different, you know
Speaker 1: it's a gun. I got up to go out, and
Speaker 1: by this stage we'd heard running feet and yells and
Speaker 1: screams because the man who'd been shot, Bennett Chuck, had
Speaker 1: run downstairs from Court twelve, covered in blood and police
Speaker 1: were yelling. People were yelling. Bystanders were yelling. It was
Speaker 1: a very scary situation, and in fact, I think police
Speaker 1: downstairs thought it was an escape attempt, that it was
Speaker 1: a fake shooting to stage an escape, but it wasn't.
Speaker 1: He had been shot in the torso he was dying
Speaker 1: on his feet by the time he got to the
Speaker 1: bottom of the stairs he collapsed. He was picked up
Speaker 1: and taken to around the corner to Vincent's I think,
Speaker 1: which is just nearby, and I think he was either
Speaker 1: dead on arrival or died on the operating table.
Speaker 2: He was dead.
Speaker 1: And that was the execution of Raymond Patrick Bennett, alias
Speaker 1: Ray Chuck. And that execution, without doubt, was carried out
Speaker 1: by Brian kan the older brother of Les Kane, the
Speaker 1: man who had been abducted and killed eighteen months earlier.
Speaker 1: And Brian Kane made good his escape from court in
Speaker 1: a way that I've described here before, a very convoluted
Speaker 1: escape route, but very well planned out to the backyard
Speaker 1: of the court where there had been a piece of
Speaker 1: tin bent up so he could jump through the back
Speaker 1: of the shed where the magistrates used to park their
Speaker 1: cars and into the r mit car park as it
Speaker 1: then was waiting for him. I am told on impeccable
Speaker 1: authority was the other brother, Muscles Caine ray Kine, who
Speaker 1: is now dead, so it's not a problem. Who drove
Speaker 1: him to the airport and they went for a long
Speaker 1: holiday to Perth and let the scene quiet and down.
Speaker 1: And as we've said here before, there is no doubt
Speaker 1: that some police were complicit in that shooting, not a
Speaker 1: lot of police, but a couple, because somebody bent up
Speaker 1: the back of the magistrates shed where they parked their cars,
Speaker 1: and it was all very beautifully executed. So ray Chuck's
Speaker 1: execution in the City Court reverberated through the underworld and
Speaker 1: that had a knock on effect, and that knock on
Speaker 1: effect was felt immediately by Stan James and his wife
Speaker 1: in their little house in King Street, Essendon. The remarkable
Speaker 1: thing about the house at fifty one King Street, the
Speaker 1: one that was bought by mister and missus James was
Speaker 1: that they left it very suddenly after the shooting of
Speaker 1: Raymond Patrick Bennett in the City Court. So in November
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy nine, Raychuck Ray Bennett is shot dead at
Speaker 1: the City Court. This is really up the ante. And
Speaker 1: that same week Stan James and his wife decide they
Speaker 1: are leaving their house at fifty one King Street in
Speaker 1: Essenon and they are going into state, back to New
Speaker 1: South Wales where they originally came from. And that is
Speaker 1: why an agent that they appointed rented that house out
Speaker 1: just before Christmas that year, or in late November that
Speaker 1: year to a young fellow called Michael Hinch. Michael Hinch
Speaker 1: was a trainee train driver and he is a smart,
Speaker 1: observant young fellow, which is what you've got to be
Speaker 1: when you're a trained driver, because we don't want people
Speaker 1: driving trains who aren't observant and they are not smart.
Speaker 1: And he was both of those things. And young Hinch
Speaker 1: remembers it clearly because he noticed how much security was
Speaker 1: around the house, and the agent, being an agent, told
Speaker 1: a porky He said it was a little old lady
Speaker 1: had lived there and she was nervous about things, and
Speaker 1: so she had bars on the windows, and she had
Speaker 1: deadlocks on the doors. But it was a bit hard
Speaker 1: to explain everything that was there because there was a
Speaker 1: steel plated door which was up behind the normal front
Speaker 1: wooden door, so it was an extra door to make
Speaker 1: it much harder to break into. Not only that, somebody
Speaker 1: had bolted big brackets either side of that door, so
Speaker 1: you could drop a piece of steel or a piece
Speaker 1: of timber across behind the door to basically barret shut
Speaker 1: against any sort of invasion, so someone would need a
Speaker 1: battering ramp to get to you. This is in addition
Speaker 1: to barred windows and so on. Now there were deadlocks
Speaker 1: all over the place. The whole place was deadlocked. In fact,
Speaker 1: young Michael Hints, who I think was just married at
Speaker 1: the stage, he said he used to take the keys,
Speaker 1: the house keys to bed at night because he said,
Speaker 1: I was frightened if there was a fire, we'd be
Speaker 1: locked in and.
Speaker 2: Never get out.
Speaker 1: I needed to have the keys where I can use them,
Speaker 1: get them quickly. Then he noticed something that subsequently he
Speaker 1: found out the police had not noticed. He noticed that
Speaker 1: there's a fireplace in this house, in the main living room.
Speaker 1: It's in a corner. But instead of sort of being
Speaker 1: at the correct angle. It was out from the wall
Speaker 1: a bit and it was at a funny angle. He said,
Speaker 1: it was about fifteen degrees off what it should have been.
Speaker 1: It just wasn't symmetrical. And he thought, that's weird. And
Speaker 1: you couldn't use the fireplace. It wasn't actually set up
Speaker 1: so you could light the fire because the chimney didn't
Speaker 1: align with the fireplace. And he must have been told
Speaker 1: the fire is not working or you can't use it something. Anyway,
Speaker 1: he thinks, that's funny. He's noticed outside on one of
Speaker 1: the exterior walls there's an air event event in the wall.
Speaker 1: That's funny. Why was there an event in the wall.
Speaker 1: He goes into the bathroom mondaye. He looks up and
Speaker 1: he notices that there's a man hole, very neatly cut
Speaker 1: in the bathroom above the shower or something. He said, ah,
Speaker 1: there's a manhole. So he gets a chair or bladder,
Speaker 1: climbs up through the manhole and he gets into the roof.
Speaker 1: And as we've already explained, the roof is a big space.
Speaker 1: It's got enough room that you can walk down the
Speaker 1: middle of the gable. You know, it's at least two
Speaker 1: meters high in the middle, and somebody has very kindly
Speaker 1: laid floorboards over the roof joists or ceiling joists, so
Speaker 1: that you've effectively got a floor to walk on. It's
Speaker 1: like a big storeroom up there. Well, that's not that unusual.
Speaker 1: But when you walk to the front of the house
Speaker 1: along with these floorboards, to the very front of the house,
Speaker 1: he saw that it was open to the elements that
Speaker 1: had large wooden trellis, and you could actually see out
Speaker 1: the trellis.
Speaker 2: It had big gaps.
Speaker 1: In it, and he said you could stand up there
Speaker 1: and you could look out and you could see down
Speaker 1: the street both ways. You could see people coming in
Speaker 1: the gate or from the right or the left. You
Speaker 1: had a really good view of the street and of
Speaker 1: anybody approaching.
Speaker 2: He said.
Speaker 1: There was another funny thing. He said, the trellis was open.
Speaker 1: You could poke something through it, like a gun. And
Speaker 1: normally it'd be glazed, or to have weather boards, or
Speaker 1: to have at least flywire or something. It was open
Speaker 1: so you could poke something through it if you so wanted.
Speaker 1: And what gave him the idea of guns was that
Speaker 1: on either side of this opening onto the street there
Speaker 1: were U shaped swivels, and the U shaped swivels were
Speaker 1: a little bit like rolic that you put in a
Speaker 1: rowboat to row with with the yours, very.
Speaker 2: Similar to that.
Speaker 1: And he said, what they obviously were, it seemed to him,
Speaker 1: were perfect things to rest a gun in that you
Speaker 1: could swivel around from right to left, left to right,
Speaker 1: and you could cover the driveway and the street. And
Speaker 1: he said that house was impregnable. If somebody was attacking,
Speaker 1: you could get up there and you could take on
Speaker 1: a dozen attackers and clean them up before they could
Speaker 1: break open your front door, because the front door was very,
Speaker 1: very heavily fortified. And he thought, well, that's interesting, isn't it.
Speaker 1: So he walks back into the big open roof space
Speaker 1: and he goes over near the chimney, the four said
Speaker 1: chimney above the a four said crooked fireplace, and he
Speaker 1: sees beside the chimney, in a very odd spot, a
Speaker 1: smallish trapdoor, very neatly done, very fine piece of work.
Speaker 1: You could hardly see it. And he gets a pocket
Speaker 1: knife or something. He lifts the trap door and he
Speaker 1: sees a light switch, and he turns on the light
Speaker 1: switch and he looks down into the gloom, and he
Speaker 1: sees it's a shaft. It's a narrow space down beside
Speaker 1: the chimney, a hidden cavity in the corner of the
Speaker 1: wall behind the fire that has been moved out. The
Speaker 1: fireplace has been moved out, and there's his hidden cavity,
Speaker 1: essentially the size of an open fire, let's say. And
Speaker 1: in that tiny cavity were two tiny little stools you
Speaker 1: could sit on. Only room for one person, he thought,
Speaker 1: but two stools, And on one of the stools was
Speaker 1: an ashtray full of cigarette butts. So someone had sat
Speaker 1: in that space and smokes cigarettes. Hence the air vent
Speaker 1: that went to the outside of the house. This was
Speaker 1: a very cunningly contrived piece of engineering so that you
Speaker 1: could hide in that house, or hide a wanted person
Speaker 1: in that house so they would not be found and fighting.
Speaker 1: They had water and some food, they could stay in
Speaker 1: that space for quite a while. So our man Michael
Speaker 1: Hinch is sort of interested in this, puzzled and intrigued.
Speaker 1: He's busy though he's studying for his next step up
Speaker 1: in the train driver's exams. He's studying like hell to
Speaker 1: get his final exams. And it's late in nineteen eighty.
Speaker 1: So this is one year after he's rented the house
Speaker 1: and one day there's a knock on the door and
Speaker 1: to see the agent, the same agent who told him
Speaker 1: as a little old lady that had had all this security.
Speaker 1: And the agent said, oh, look, sorry, Michael, you're going
Speaker 1: to have to move out the end of next week
Speaker 1: because the owner and his wife are coming back. Apparently
Speaker 1: this situation has aulted. They want to come back and
Speaker 1: live in their house again, and you left, move out
Speaker 1: and find somewhere else. And oh, he said, well that's
Speaker 1: not real good. I've got these exams coming up at
Speaker 1: the end of the week. And you know, anyway, he
Speaker 1: wasn't happy, but he knew he had to do it.
Speaker 1: No sooner the agent has gone. Then two detectives turner
Speaker 1: from them robbery squad, if not the consorting squad. There
Speaker 1: heavy heavy duty detectives, and they introduced themselves and explained
Speaker 1: that the landlord was not a little old lady, but
Speaker 1: it was a fellow that they were very, very interested in.
Speaker 1: And they said, we want to make sure we know
Speaker 1: what he you know, what he's up to. Can you
Speaker 1: get us some keys? We'll borrow spect of keys from you,
Speaker 1: so we can get in and out. Please, perhaps you
Speaker 1: and your wife would like to go for you know,
Speaker 1: account to you or a count of lunch or something.
Speaker 1: Go out for a while. He said, when you get back,
Speaker 1: I know you're only here for a week or so,
Speaker 1: but maybe don't say anything that you don't want us
Speaker 1: to hear. He was giving the tip off they're going
Speaker 1: to bug the hell out of the place. So the
Speaker 1: police have installed bugs all over the joint. Obviously, our
Speaker 1: man Michael Hinch moves out to a flat somewhere or whatever,
Speaker 1: and Stan James and his wife Lorraine moved back in.
Speaker 1: But I understand that despite the fact there was so
Speaker 1: many bugs, the Jamess never said anything that was worth overhearing.
Speaker 1: The thing about Stan James, he not only didn't say
Speaker 1: anything at home, he never said anything anywhere. He was
Speaker 1: so good at keeping a low profile and so subtle
Speaker 1: and so good at it that it's clear that he
Speaker 1: played a crucial part back in nineteen seventy six in
Speaker 1: setting up the Great Bookie robbery. And there is no
Speaker 1: doubt that the man who did the heavy thinking about
Speaker 1: how to do it, how to get person A in
Speaker 1: position Person B somewhere else, was the late Stan James
Speaker 1: because a few things had to happen in the bookie
Speaker 1: robbery back in seventy six, and one was you had
Speaker 1: to know that there was an unused door in the
Speaker 1: wall of the upstairs room where they did the settlement,
Speaker 1: that the settling, the settling of the bookie's money, and
Speaker 1: that door had been left there as a result of
Speaker 1: renovations and building works done years earlier, and the builders
Speaker 1: that had to have access to the building next door,
Speaker 1: and they had this doorway so they could move from
Speaker 1: one building to the other through the party wall into
Speaker 1: a landing and unused landing in the building next door.
Speaker 1: And very few people would actually remember that that door
Speaker 1: was there because on the Victorian club side, it didn't
Speaker 1: have a knob. It just had a little bolt down
Speaker 1: at the floor level, and it was all painted over
Speaker 1: the same color as the wall. It was plastered and
Speaker 1: painted much like the rest of the wall, and so
Speaker 1: it was virtually invisible unless you knew you were actually
Speaker 1: looking at it. But the Roberts knew all about it,
Speaker 1: and that was where they hid. They hid through that
Speaker 1: door on the landing in the building next door until
Speaker 1: they knew the precise second that they should whip open
Speaker 1: the door which they'd a prayer range they'd been in,
Speaker 1: and cut the bolt and were able to force it
Speaker 1: open swiftly and step into the room, armed and masked,
Speaker 1: as if they'd arrived in a spaceship. It was just
Speaker 1: amazing that one second they're not there, the next second
Speaker 1: they're there. This took everyone by surprise, including of course
Speaker 1: the armed security guards who were by this stage sitting
Speaker 1: down eating their free piles and sandwiches and a cup
Speaker 1: of tea. And it was a beautiful thing. It's well
Speaker 1: held that there was an inside man at the club
Speaker 1: who infiltrated the club, the Victorian Club, which was mostly
Speaker 1: attended by bookmakers and racing people and some lawyers. Interestingly,
Speaker 1: and the former president of the club has told me
Speaker 1: in recent years that they had noticed that this fellow
Speaker 1: had sort of insinuated his way into the club. He said,
Speaker 1: was pretty casual. We didn't force everybody to sign the
Speaker 1: book or whatever.
Speaker 2: He said.
Speaker 1: This bloke, he used to wear a suit and send
Speaker 1: a nice, pleasant bloke, and he was a good listener,
Speaker 1: and he would come in and attach himself to a
Speaker 1: group of drinkers and have a chat about this and that,
Speaker 1: and the weather. We thought he came from Adelaide, said
Speaker 1: the President. He said he was something to do with
Speaker 1: transport business from Adelaide, and he'd move around from one
Speaker 1: group to the other and chat away. But looking back
Speaker 1: on it, they think he was the guy that was
Speaker 1: busy soaking up the atmosphere, soaking up the exact meat
Speaker 1: mentions of the room, the exact places where the doorways were,
Speaker 1: and all little facts that the robbers would need to know.
Speaker 1: And they think that this is the guy who worked
Speaker 1: out precisely how long it would take to rob the place,
Speaker 1: what you would need to cover, how many men you'd need,
Speaker 1: how many guns you'd need, how many bags you'd need,
Speaker 1: just all the gear you need. You need the big
Speaker 1: bolt cutters, you need certain equipment to get away with it.
Speaker 1: And that Stan James was the brains who did the
Speaker 1: time and motion.
Speaker 2: Study for the Great Bookie Robbery.
Speaker 1: I'm told as recently as today by someone who's great
Speaker 1: and good friends with a former armed robbery boss. When
Speaker 1: I say an arm robbery boss, an armed robbery detective boss,
Speaker 1: a senior policeman, I'm told that he was regarded as
Speaker 1: Australia's cleverest crook.
Speaker 2: Who was never.
Speaker 1: Caught, Stanley Earnest James Crook, who was never caught, and
Speaker 1: who never fired a shot in anger. No doubt, some
Speaker 1: of the things we've talked about today are familiar because
Speaker 1: some of this story touches on stories we've told before.
Speaker 1: And if anybody out there feels that they want to
Speaker 1: know more about it and go back and research it again,
Speaker 1: they can go back and hear about the Great Bookiey
Speaker 1: Robbery in previous shows in depth, and we will include
Speaker 1: the names of each separate episode in this show's description.
Speaker 2: Completed