Speaker 1: She had a great demeanor, she had great charisma, She
Speaker 1: was a very fine dresser, and she was a marvelous
Speaker 1: con artist. They became party to a plot to pull
Speaker 1: Australia's first armored car cash heist, and there it is
Speaker 1: said that what became known as the toe Cutter Gang
Speaker 1: got its name because they tortured Baldi Blair to get
Speaker 1: him to reveal where his cash was. I'm Andrew ruled
Speaker 1: his life in crimes. One of the big names in
Speaker 1: crime back in the day, as we say, back in
Speaker 1: the sixties seventies, was a fellow called Frank Baldy Blair.
Speaker 1: His real name was Frank, his nickname was Baldi. All
Speaker 1: crooks have to have nicknames. Surname was Blair, b l Air.
Speaker 1: Baldy Blair came from Melbourne. He was one of that
Speaker 1: crew of inner suburban heavyweights who came out of the
Speaker 1: mean streets of Richmond, Port, Melbourne, etc. Collingwood. He ended
Speaker 1: up on the docks or hanging around the docks, like
Speaker 1: a lot of heavies did in those days, and in fact,
Speaker 1: like good Melbourne crooks did. Then he became a painter
Speaker 1: and docker. Something like three quarters of the membership of
Speaker 1: the painters and dockers were people with extensive criminal records,
Speaker 1: a little bit like the modern day CFMU, some would suggest,
Speaker 1: but I'd suggest the painters and dockers were more criminal
Speaker 1: than the CFMU and had a lot of very violent
Speaker 1: men on its books. And one of them was Baldy Blair.
Speaker 1: And Baldy Blair in the late sixties he and others
Speaker 1: ran some big scams on the waterfront. And what they
Speaker 1: used to do if they weren't stealing cargo by the
Speaker 1: container load or whatever or by the shipload, they were
Speaker 1: running contraband and they would be bringing in in those
Speaker 1: days a lot of hash and cannabis products from the
Speaker 1: Golden Triangle, things like that, and selling it on what
Speaker 1: was then the burgeoning emerging drug market. Baldi was pretty
Speaker 1: good at this. They had some good schemes going. They
Speaker 1: would mark a particular container I think it was with
Speaker 1: pornographic pictures so they knew which one was the one
Speaker 1: with the hash in it. They would then load it
Speaker 1: up onto a truck and take it off the docks
Speaker 1: and unload it and sell it for lots of money.
Speaker 1: Too much of a good thing is never a good thing.
Speaker 1: Because the authorities worked out what they're up to, and
Speaker 1: then other crooks worked out what they were up to.
Speaker 1: And in the end Baldy Blair went to Sydney and
Speaker 1: there he reinvented himself as a stick up man and
Speaker 1: Melbourne crooks like him had a bit of a reputation
Speaker 1: in Sydney for being uncompromising hard guys, and Baldi Blair
Speaker 1: had with him made of his called Steve Nitty's and
Speaker 1: Steve Nitty's alias the Bomber, was a former boxer who
Speaker 1: used to train at Richmond at the late Great Leo
Speaker 1: Berry's gym. I think Nittys might have had a national
Speaker 1: title belt. He was pretty good at it, but he
Speaker 1: gave up boxing eventually and became a gunman and heavy
Speaker 1: and he got his nickname the Bomber because he blew
Speaker 1: up a nightclub with a bomb or threatened to. And
Speaker 1: these guys land in Sydney and set themselves up in
Speaker 1: the robbery business, and it comes to pass that they
Speaker 1: would sit around at the Oceanic Hotel in Kuji and
Speaker 1: they'd held up with some Sydney crooks and they'd sit
Speaker 1: around and plan jobs, and they'd received Stalin Goods and
Speaker 1: Salem and they'd plan robberies and do them and all
Speaker 1: the rest of the criminal stuff, and Baldy had taken up.
Speaker 1: Soon after he went to Sydney, he went to Checkers nightclub.
Speaker 1: I think it was called in Sydney. There was also
Speaker 1: one in Melbourne, I think, but there was one in Sydney.
Speaker 1: And he went there and he met a most beautiful
Speaker 1: scallywag woman called Patricia. Now we're going to call her
Speaker 1: Patricia Blair because they either got married or they had
Speaker 1: a de facto relationship, but she was known later on
Speaker 1: as Patricia Blair took his name. She was a very
Speaker 1: beautiful woman, and she was very confident. She had a
Speaker 1: great demeanor, she had great charisma, She was a very
Speaker 1: fine dresser, and she was a marvelous con artist and
Speaker 1: also very nimble. She could steal things, and she was
Speaker 1: quite a high end jewel thief, among other attributes. And Baldy,
Speaker 1: the sort of rough, tough bulldog of a man, and
Speaker 1: the beautiful jewel thief became an item. And at this
Speaker 1: point Patricia already had a little, tiny boy, a little
Speaker 1: boy called Larry. Now Larry's batural father was not Baldy Blair.
Speaker 1: He was someone else. And we don't need to worry
Speaker 1: about who that is. But Baldy became that little boy's father,
Speaker 1: the only father he knew, and the little boy, Larry
Speaker 1: became known as Larry Blair. And there they were, mister
Speaker 1: and missus Blair and their son Larry, and the other
Speaker 1: crooks used to call Larry little Lord Fauntleroy because his mother,
Speaker 1: Patricia would dress him beautifully, mostly in stolen clothes from
Speaker 1: high end shops that she'd rob, and he'd have silk
Speaker 1: shirts and all the rest of it, in beautiful leather
Speaker 1: shoes and all this good stuff. And the rough hard
Speaker 1: arm robbers and others and burglars and stand over men
Speaker 1: and gunman who drank with Baldy Blair at the OSHI
Speaker 1: as they call it, the Oceanic Hotel, would laugh at
Speaker 1: this little boy when he came along to snip dad
Speaker 1: for five dollars to go surfing or whatever, and they
Speaker 1: call him thortle Roy and joke with him and buy
Speaker 1: my raspberry lemonade Da da da da dam. And little
Speaker 1: did the little boy know, and he's he's seven eight
Speaker 1: nine ten, that sort of age group. Little did he
Speaker 1: realize that the men that his father hung around with
Speaker 1: these friends of his father's were a very treacherous and
Speaker 1: violent crowd. But he did sense that they weren't all
Speaker 1: nice people. He had that child's sense of not only
Speaker 1: of innocence, but of sensing that some people meant no good.
Speaker 1: And he sensed that some of them were pretty bad
Speaker 1: dudes indeed, and that he thought they had false smiles
Speaker 1: and so on. And he was right, as events would prove.
Speaker 1: And one thing led to another, and Baldy Blair and
Speaker 1: Steve Nittis from Melbourne his mate, and another guy called
Speaker 1: I think Alan Jones funnily enough common name, isn't it
Speaker 1: Alan Jones. That's not Alan Jones the radio man, nor
Speaker 1: is it racing. It's just Alan Jones, who was a
Speaker 1: gunman who's now dead. They became party to a plot
Speaker 1: to pull Australia's first armored car cash heist, a robbery
Speaker 1: of an armored car never been done before. This is
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy. They got the plan for this heist
Speaker 1: from a very clever crook called Les Woon w n
Speaker 1: known around the underworld as Wooker Look Woon. You have
Speaker 1: to have a nickname, and that was his and Wooker
Speaker 1: Woon was one of these smart crooks who used to
Speaker 1: get information inside information about money movements and all the
Speaker 1: rest of it. And he had information that a main
Speaker 1: Nicholas armored car would go around the western suburbs on
Speaker 1: a given day every week and would go to the
Speaker 1: racecourse to pick up race money from the bookies and
Speaker 1: to go to the something bank and there's something partman,
Speaker 1: there's something shops and pick up all cash and take
Speaker 1: it back to the reserve bank, so on and so forth.
Speaker 1: And it appeared that the people in the armored car
Speaker 1: had grown complacent and lazy, and instead of varying their
Speaker 1: root and their times, they stuck to a rigid timetable.
Speaker 1: And it meant that creatures of habit. These fellows, three
Speaker 1: guys in the armored car creatures of habit. Every day
Speaker 1: they would stop their armored car full of money, jam
Speaker 1: full of cash in a particular small park near a
Speaker 1: bank in the suburb of Guildford in Sydney, and there
Speaker 1: they would have their lunch. They'd pull out their sandwiches
Speaker 1: and their thumus of tea or perhaps coffee, and maybe
Speaker 1: a drink of water, and they sangers and maybe cut
Speaker 1: up an apple or an orange, you know, and have
Speaker 1: their cup of tea, and then very neat and tidy,
Speaker 1: they'd open the door of their armored vehicle and one
Speaker 1: of them would trapes across, or maybe two of them
Speaker 1: would apes across to the bin in the park and
Speaker 1: put their lunch trappers in the bin. Very tidy and
Speaker 1: good citizens, but very stupid because you are driving a
Speaker 1: van full of cash, you've pulled up and you've opened
Speaker 1: the door. You are asking for trouble. Well guess what happened.
Speaker 1: Baldy Steve Nittis and l Jones robbed them and it
Speaker 1: was the first armored car robbery in Australia, and it
Speaker 1: was a great success because the robbers all wore mirrored sunglasses.
Speaker 1: Then of great novelty mirrored hats. They had these hats
Speaker 1: with sort of little shiny things on them, which meant
Speaker 1: that anybody looking at them would see reflections of themselves,
Speaker 1: which is disconcerting. And they also wore and I love
Speaker 1: this detail, this is wonderful. They wore full length Butcher's aprons,
Speaker 1: the Butcher's uniform of the long stripey. Remember the navy
Speaker 1: and white stripes that Butcher's used to wear. That's what
Speaker 1: they had on, and it meant that all of them
Speaker 1: looks yimla. They looked a little bit odd, but the
Speaker 1: same as each other, and very difficult to distinguish from
Speaker 1: each other. You know, in general terms, you co'd say, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, one was a bit bigger than the others
Speaker 1: or something, but not much. No colors of eyes, no
Speaker 1: obvious features. They robbed the armored van of five hundred
Speaker 1: and eighty eight odd thousand dollars. Now, in nineteen seventy,
Speaker 1: ladies and gentlemen, that was a lot of money. In
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy, I was getting fifty cents a week pocket money,
Speaker 1: and fifty cents a week pocket money was like getting
Speaker 1: twenty five dollars a week now, I reckon because for
Speaker 1: fifty cents, you could make yourself sick on fish and
Speaker 1: chips for ten cents and they still have forty cents
Speaker 1: left over. You know, that would keep you going for
Speaker 1: all the other days of the week. So five hundred
Speaker 1: and eighty thousand dollars was probably the price of fifty
Speaker 1: eight houses in country towns around Australia or forty odd
Speaker 1: suburban houses around Australia. Good ones, really good ones. Back
Speaker 1: in the sixties there used to be a raffle held
Speaker 1: to raise money to build the Opera House in Sydney.
Speaker 1: The Sydney Opera House raffle was a big deal, a lottery,
Speaker 1: it was called, and the house that was the prize
Speaker 1: in that was advertised back in the pre decimal currency
Speaker 1: days as something like five pounds, you know, ten thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: So that does give you an idea of the huge
Speaker 1: amount of money that these guys got, and in our
Speaker 1: currency today it'd be worth about ten million, they say,
Speaker 1: a lot of dough. Now, half the money was to
Speaker 1: go to wook A Wound, the mastermind who'd planned it
Speaker 1: from Afar, and some of that, I think some of
Speaker 1: that half went to senior painters and dockers in Melbourne
Speaker 1: who were inclined to sort of clip the ticket of
Speaker 1: big robberies done by their members that you had to
Speaker 1: kick some back up the line to the bosses. But
Speaker 1: the other half pretty went to the three guys who
Speaker 1: got it. So they took off with about one hundred
Speaker 1: thousand dollars each, a lot of dope. And Larry Blair
Speaker 1: can recall his father coming home, coming home, turning up
Speaker 1: in a brand new v eight Valiant car. He said,
Speaker 1: the color of a fresh turd is the way that
Speaker 1: Larry described it, and blowing the horn, turning the radio
Speaker 1: full belt and saying party time, Party time. Were all
Speaker 1: going to dinner because he just pulled this massive robbery.
Speaker 1: And so they all friends and family piled into the
Speaker 1: Valiant and they went around to the best Chinese joint
Speaker 1: in Sydney and they had a massive feed, and then
Speaker 1: they had massive amounts of booze, and then they had
Speaker 1: more food and more booze until they all passed out.
Speaker 1: It was just a really big party, which was probably
Speaker 1: not a great way to not draw attention to yourself.
Speaker 1: To be buying a brand new vut car and then
Speaker 1: spending a fortune on a meal and a drink up
Speaker 1: for all your friends and family, it sort of would
Speaker 1: stand out a bit, and indeed it did attract attention
Speaker 1: from various people. And I think some of those people
Speaker 1: might have been corrupt police who in Sydney were particularly
Speaker 1: keen on knowing who had robbed anything, because they considered
Speaker 1: that they should always get a share of anything that
Speaker 1: had been robbed. In Sydney in those days, the homicide
Speaker 1: Squad would organize the murders, the breaking squad would organize
Speaker 1: the big breakings. I'm going to take a share of
Speaker 1: any big breakings, and the robbery squad would want a
Speaker 1: share of any armed robberies. And so it would be
Speaker 1: obvious that the bent Coppers of Sydney would be very
Speaker 1: keen to get their finger in the pie and get
Speaker 1: some of this doe. Now, if these hard headed Melbourne
Speaker 1: crooks weren't handing money over to their hosts in Sydney,
Speaker 1: things could turn nasty. And the bent Coppers in Sydney,
Speaker 1: notably a fellow called Freddie kray H. He was a
Speaker 1: detective sergeant. He was a very scary man. He killed people,
Speaker 1: he stood over people. He would do anything, and he
Speaker 1: supposedly had a secondhand shop of his own where stolen
Speaker 1: goods were sold, and he did contract killings. He did
Speaker 1: whatever it took. It is said. It is alleged that
Speaker 1: he and a couple of Sydney crooks said, what about
Speaker 1: these guys getting this big score? We want some of
Speaker 1: it or all of it or whatever, And so they
Speaker 1: were putting their hand out looking for money. Well, Baldy
Speaker 1: Blair and his two mates did a runner and Baldi
Speaker 1: Blair said to Patricia, the beautiful jewel thief wife and
Speaker 1: little Larry on the road, let's go, and they lit out.
Speaker 1: They first of all dropped Larry's little sister. By this
Speaker 1: stage Larry had a baby sister called Kelly. They dropped
Speaker 1: Kelly with some friends and they had a labrador dog
Speaker 1: which they took around and dropped off at Jack Sparrow's house.
Speaker 1: Would you believe in Sydney in those days there was
Speaker 1: a colorful racing identity called Jack Sparrow, and Jack Sparrow
Speaker 1: not the one in Pirates of the Caribbean. This is
Speaker 1: the real Jack Sparrow, who did have a bit of
Speaker 1: pirate in him. But that's where the labrador was dropped
Speaker 1: off and the family of three, although I think they
Speaker 1: got the baby back on the way somewhere. They might
Speaker 1: have got little baby Kelly from a friend and picked
Speaker 1: her up again. So in the end they're in the
Speaker 1: Valiant and they're heading it to the outback. So Baldy Patricia,
Speaker 1: Larry who's about eleven by this ten or eleven, and
Speaker 1: his little baby sister Kelly, and they go to Cooper Peedy,
Speaker 1: Cooper Petty, the Opel Fields right out in the boondocks
Speaker 1: roughly where New South Wales hits the South Australian border
Speaker 1: and all that sort of stuff right out with all
Speaker 1: the states meet in the corner country. I think it's
Speaker 1: out there somewhere, and there is a lot of interesting
Speaker 1: people at Kuoper Petty. In those days. I think people
Speaker 1: who were on the run from other places would go
Speaker 1: to Kuber Peaty and there were a lot of underground
Speaker 1: houses there, you know, literally houses dug into the earth
Speaker 1: because people have been mining there for decades. And they
Speaker 1: hid out at kuber Peaty and they should have stayed
Speaker 1: there for longer, and then they should have gone somewhere
Speaker 1: else and stayed there longer and let everything cool right off.
Speaker 1: But crooks are risk takers. They want to spend their money,
Speaker 1: They want a big note. They don't want to be
Speaker 1: away from the big centers of Sydney and Melbourne because
Speaker 1: that's you know, that's the center of the world to them.
Speaker 1: And foolishly Baldy Blairs every week going back and they
Speaker 1: went back to Sydney. Long story short. Baldy Blair, cocky, confident,
Speaker 1: tough little man that he was. He went back to
Speaker 1: the Oceanic Hotel to where his drinking mates were and
Speaker 1: you know, shouted everybody a drink and we're all happy
Speaker 1: families again. And he thinks that all the heaters died
Speaker 1: down and no one's going to clip him for money.
Speaker 1: And he was wrong, because you know what they did.
Speaker 1: They said, oh, Bali, Baldie mate, come over and look
Speaker 1: in this van. You know, Harry's got a van here
Speaker 1: full of hot gear, hot this or hot that, stolen stuff.
Speaker 1: And of course this is what these guys used to do.
Speaker 1: We'k in week out they'd be buying and selling hot gear.
Speaker 1: And then went over to the van and they opened
Speaker 1: up the door for him to look at the hot
Speaker 1: gear and then they grabbed him and throw him in it,
Speaker 1: and somebody put a gun in his ear and they
Speaker 1: took him away. And we can't really say where, but
Speaker 1: it will have been a warehouse or an empty premises
Speaker 1: of factory, probably around the Botany area out near the
Speaker 1: airport Kingsford Smith Airport, Sydney. And there it is said
Speaker 1: that what became known as the toe Cutter Gang got
Speaker 1: its name because they tortured Baldy Blair with bolt cutters
Speaker 1: and with a blow torch to get him to reveal
Speaker 1: where his cash was where the cash robbery cash was.
Speaker 1: The name the toe Cutter Gang was coined over that
Speaker 1: specific incident and the fact that they also did it
Speaker 1: to his two mates to is too. Mates in the robbery,
Speaker 1: that is Steve Nitti's and Alan Jones, who actually survived
Speaker 1: and got away. They probably were able to give some
Speaker 1: information or some money to the toe Cutters, but for
Speaker 1: whatever reason, that didn't happen with Baldi Blair. Perhaps he
Speaker 1: was too tough for his own good and wouldn't divulge,
Speaker 1: or perhaps they injured him too seriously before he divulged.
Speaker 1: But the long and the short of it is that
Speaker 1: he died of his injuries or they killed him. And
Speaker 1: the story that Larry, as an adult twenty thirty years later,
Speaker 1: was able to put together was that his body was
Speaker 1: probably dissolved in a vat of acid and then they
Speaker 1: buried his remains underneath the extension to the I think
Speaker 1: north South runway of the airport was then being built
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy, So they took whatever was left of
Speaker 1: poor old Baldi and they tipped it out in a
Speaker 1: trench or whatever where they were building the north South runway,
Speaker 1: and that was the end of Baldy Blair, So that
Speaker 1: left he very shattered, Patricia, his wife, and a very
Speaker 1: anxious son, Larry, who realized, of course that Baldy, who
Speaker 1: you know, Larry says, was a bully and a rogue
Speaker 1: and a womanizer, and you know, a lot of bad things.
Speaker 1: He wasn't of father of the year, but he was
Speaker 1: the only father this kid had, and in his own way,
Speaker 1: he sort of loved him. And they were scared that
Speaker 1: the bad guys would come for them, and I think
Speaker 1: they were right to be scared. Patricia had a very
Speaker 1: acute sense of self preservation, and she was intuitive and
Speaker 1: intelligent when she could read the play very well, and
Speaker 1: she said, right, we're going. As soon as she heard
Speaker 1: that Bully had disappeared, she grabs her son, She drops
Speaker 1: a daughter, the little girl, off at other friends, and
Speaker 1: they go and get on an aeroplane to fly to Melbourne.
Speaker 1: And they're at the airport at Sydney in an ansett plane.
Speaker 1: It taxies out from the terminal to get to the
Speaker 1: actual strip to take off, and Patricia looks over her
Speaker 1: shoulder and sees a red guy called Billy Maloney. Billy
Speaker 1: Maloney was one of the guys from the Oceanic Hotel
Speaker 1: who used to be a drinking partner, drinking buddy of ballies.
Speaker 1: And she knows that Billy Maloney is one of the
Speaker 1: treacherous bastards who has been one of the toe cutters.
Speaker 1: And she thinks, and she's probably right, that he's following
Speaker 1: them to Melbourne because she's trying to go into smoke,
Speaker 1: she's trying to vanish, and there's this guy four seats
Speaker 1: behind them. She bolts straight down to the cockpit. She
Speaker 1: bangs on the cockpit door. She gets the captain of
Speaker 1: the plane to stop the plane and speak to her.
Speaker 1: And because of her vehemence, her articulate nature, possibly because
Speaker 1: of her beauty, because that doesn't do any harm, she
Speaker 1: was able to persuade the captain that the flight should
Speaker 1: not take off until he'd called the police radio for
Speaker 1: the police to come. That they wheeled the steps back
Speaker 1: out to the plane, opened the door of the plane
Speaker 1: and escorted she and her son off the plane, leaving
Speaker 1: the red haired passenger on it. So this is how
Speaker 1: she avoided the bad guy on the plane following her
Speaker 1: to Melbourne. The police come and escort them off the plane.
Speaker 1: The plane takes off and goes to Melbourne. Meanwhile, they're
Speaker 1: in Sydney with the police and the police said, what
Speaker 1: are we going to do with you? Well, you've got
Speaker 1: to take her somewhere safe. So the police dropped them
Speaker 1: off at a dodgy old motel which I think was
Speaker 1: in Couljiebay Road, but it doesn't really matter. It's a
Speaker 1: dodgy old motel on the edge of Sydney somewhere. And
Speaker 1: that night he can remember this is Larry telling this
Speaker 1: story because Larry's now written a book, which is why
Speaker 1: we're interested. Larry tells the story that that night he
Speaker 1: and his mother are in this motel room and they're
Speaker 1: very awake, and they're very nervous, and they fold down
Speaker 1: this dodgy old joint had these fold down beds that
Speaker 1: were really squeaky and horrible, and they fold it down
Speaker 1: and they get on the bed and they're lying there
Speaker 1: wondering what's going to happen next, and how they're going
Speaker 1: to get to Melbourne and all that, when they hear something.
Speaker 1: They hear in the corridor one of the little trolleys
Speaker 1: that the maids used to bring the sheets and the
Speaker 1: meals and the whatever, all the stuff around the shampoo.
Speaker 1: They hear this squeaking wheels of this trolley. They'd squeak
Speaker 1: along and then stop. Then they'd hear a voice, a
Speaker 1: knock on the door, and then a voice. Then it'd
Speaker 1: move on to the next door, and so on. And
Speaker 1: Patricia realizes it's after midnight and this will not be
Speaker 1: a legitimate trolley run. It's too late, she said, quick
Speaker 1: she grabs the boy, Larry. She shoves him out the window.
Speaker 1: They're up a couple of flights, a couple of stories.
Speaker 1: Climb down, climb down. They both get out the window
Speaker 1: and they climb down the downpipe. They're guttering the downpipe
Speaker 1: and they're hoping that the rusty old downpipe won't break.
Speaker 1: And they get to the ground. They jump over the
Speaker 1: fence next door into the next door block. And the
Speaker 1: next door block is I think it was undeveloped, might
Speaker 1: have been a building site or something, and it had
Speaker 1: some scrub on it and some lantana bushes, which is rubbishy,
Speaker 1: noxious weed. And they hide in the lantana bush. And
Speaker 1: as soon as they get over that fence. Now a
Speaker 1: minute after vacating the room via the window, they hear
Speaker 1: this crash from upstairs, whoever it was, having knocked on
Speaker 1: their door and no answer, has kicked their door in,
Speaker 1: broken their door in, and they realized they'd missed. They'd
Speaker 1: got away by that much, but they're terrified, so they
Speaker 1: hide all night in the Lantana bushes, not moving a
Speaker 1: muscle in case somebody's looking for them. Dawn just starts
Speaker 1: to break. At whatever five point thirty six. Dawn starts
Speaker 1: to break and they creep out to the street and
Speaker 1: they see empty taxi. She sticks her hand up, pushes
Speaker 1: the son Larry into the caxi, jumps in behind him
Speaker 1: and says, quick, take us to the city bus station,
Speaker 1: the big interstate bus station. Doesn't matter where it was,
Speaker 1: but I think it was down a five dock or somewhere.
Speaker 1: And they go to the bus station and they get
Speaker 1: the first bus to Melbourne, and so by that night,
Speaker 1: after a very very grueling twenty four hours, they're in Melbourne,
Speaker 1: and then they take a train down to Frankston and
Speaker 1: there they meet a couple they call Uncle Elfie and
Speaker 1: Auntie Joan, who are not actually their blood relatives. I
Speaker 1: think they were probably friends or relatives of Baldy Blares,
Speaker 1: but these were the people that looked after them while
Speaker 1: they were hiding in Melbourne, and he writes something like
Speaker 1: Franklin was a great place to hide because no one
Speaker 1: wanted to go there, which is unkind. But the Artie
Speaker 1: Joan and Uncle elf Uncle Elfy put up a tall
Speaker 1: fence around the house, and I used to patrol the
Speaker 1: tall fence with his old shotgun. And they gave Larry
Speaker 1: a different name. He call himself Barry, Barry Brown or whatever,
Speaker 1: and he went off to the local state school under
Speaker 1: the false name. Meanwhile, Patricia hung around home and didn't
Speaker 1: go out much because she was fairly striking to look at,
Speaker 1: and it's better if she didn't get around. And they
Speaker 1: hid out there for some time now. I don't know
Speaker 1: if it was weeks or months, because Larry's memory he's
Speaker 1: not that accurate. But they stayed here a fair while
Speaker 1: until they I think they wore out there welcome naturally,
Speaker 1: and be thought it might be safe to go back
Speaker 1: to Sydney, and that things that cooled down. They might
Speaker 1: have heard that this guy's in jail, or that blokes
Speaker 1: when shit or so and so has gone to England.
Speaker 1: That the toe cutter gang had sort of dispersed a bit,
Speaker 1: and so Larry and his beloved mother, Patricia, the jewelfliff lady,
Speaker 1: who was his not only his mother, but his best
Speaker 1: friend and his great companion and his mentor. They meant
Speaker 1: everything to each other. They went back to Sydney to
Speaker 1: their little house that they had up there, and Patricia
Speaker 1: embarked on a career of jewel thefts with a gang
Speaker 1: of like minded folk that netted them some worldwide headlines.
Speaker 1: One of them in nineteen eighty ten, years after the
Speaker 1: big robbery that had caused all their troubles, she and
Speaker 1: two companions knocked off the I think it's called the
Speaker 1: gold Conondador. It's a famous massive diamond that was mine
Speaker 1: three hundred years ago in India. It was something like
Speaker 1: one hundred thirty carrot. It was extremely rare. It was
Speaker 1: really clean, clear diamond with just a sort of an
Speaker 1: orange tinge. Extremely rare. It was priceless, and it was
Speaker 1: exhibited as an exhibit at this exhibition in Sydney. It
Speaker 1: had armed guards that had all this stuff and they
Speaker 1: managed to steal it in front of a room full
Speaker 1: of people. They created some diversion and said they were
Speaker 1: there to repair the cabinet that it was in They
Speaker 1: must have worn the right sort of clothes. And they
Speaker 1: conned everybody they're there to repair the cabinet or fix
Speaker 1: the cabinet door or whatever. And they opened the cabinet
Speaker 1: door and Patricia, this is Larry's mum, because of her deafness,
Speaker 1: she was able to slide in, slip in a glass
Speaker 1: copy of this great diamond and steal the real one.
Speaker 1: And as far as anyone knows, that real one, that's
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty, that's forty four years ago. That diamond is
Speaker 1: still out there. Somebody somewhere in the world will have
Speaker 1: paid a lot of money for the pleasure of illicitly
Speaker 1: owning that stolen diamond, because it never came home as
Speaker 1: far as anyone knows. And that is the origin story
Speaker 1: of Larry Blair. Now, Larry Blair, anybody out there thinks
Speaker 1: that name is familiar, They're probably right it is. Larry
Speaker 1: Blair became one of Australia's greatest names in surfing. He
Speaker 1: was one of the first wave of big time surfers
Speaker 1: who came through in seventies. He made his name during
Speaker 1: the seventies, particularly the late seventies, and he was a
Speaker 1: contemporary of the biggest names in the game, and he
Speaker 1: was a star of the Sydney Surf Beaches along with
Speaker 1: a few other guys, and he ended up going to
Speaker 1: Hawaii to sort of polish up his technique and it
Speaker 1: was there that he won two i think two World
Speaker 1: Masters titles. So Larry Blair he went from being the
Speaker 1: son of the great armored car robber who was a
Speaker 1: victim of the toe Cutter gang, the son of the
Speaker 1: great jewel thief and beautiful gangsters mole for one of
Speaker 1: a better word, to becoming a world champion surfer. He
Speaker 1: also became an actor, a sort of a small time actor.
Speaker 1: So Larry Blair left crime behind, never really wanted to
Speaker 1: know about it. Seeing what had happened to his parents
Speaker 1: and to their friends, and seeing the treachery, the brutality,
Speaker 1: the highs and lows, it meant that he never really
Speaker 1: wanted to have anything to do with crime or with gambling,
Speaker 1: but instead he became a professional surfer. He, of course,
Speaker 1: you know, gradually faded from view and he ended up
Speaker 1: living in Southeast Asia, I think in Balley he married,
Speaker 1: or in Indonesia at least where there are a lot
Speaker 1: of big waves, and he married a local woman up there,
Speaker 1: and I think he ended up running a restaurant and
Speaker 1: became quite a competent chef. He loved cooking and being
Speaker 1: a chef. These days, I think he's back in Australia,
Speaker 1: up on northern beaches of New South Wales maybe or
Speaker 1: somewhere like that, or southern Queensland, and he's leading a
Speaker 1: quiet life. But in the last year or two he's
Speaker 1: produced this book. It's called The Outside. It's written with
Speaker 1: his surfing friend Jeremy Goring. Jeremy Goring obviously is a
Speaker 1: smart guy who understands writing and publishing and all that stuff.
Speaker 1: He probably wasn't as good as surfer as Larry, but
Speaker 1: I'm thinking he's probably a better writer than Larry. Hard
Speaker 1: to tell, but the book, it's not literature, but it's
Speaker 1: a very interesting insight into the Australian underworld of the sixties,
Speaker 1: seventies and eighties from a particular perspective. It's from the
Speaker 1: viewpoint of a child caught up in it, who doesn't
Speaker 1: want to be in it, who's caught up in it,
Speaker 1: who's fearful, who loves his mother dearly, who is angry
Speaker 1: and upset and scared because his father vanished in dreadful circumstances,
Speaker 1: and who for years lived in fear that the bad
Speaker 1: guys that killed his father would catch up with him somehow.
Speaker 1: And after he got to grow into an adult, he
Speaker 1: turned over. At the age of sixteen or whatever, he
Speaker 1: sort of turned it into a man. He then started
Speaker 1: to look forward. It's been ale as he's looking over
Speaker 1: his shoulder. But then when he got to be a
Speaker 1: young man, he started to look forward and thought, I'd
Speaker 1: like to catch up with those guys. I want to
Speaker 1: see Billy Maloney and put it on him. You know,
Speaker 1: the red hair guy that I reckon was the one
Speaker 1: that really did the damage to Dad, was a two faced,
Speaker 1: treacherous varment. I want to catch up with him. And
Speaker 1: one day he walked into a beer garden in Sydney,
Speaker 1: and there he was there all these years later. He
Speaker 1: saw this man with red hair sitting there nursing a
Speaker 1: beer and he thought, that's him. What'll I do? And
Speaker 1: what he did was he thought, that'll do. I'll just
Speaker 1: leave it. It's not worth worrying about. Look at him.
Speaker 1: He's pathetic. There's nothing to be gained one way or another.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to talk to him, I'm not going
Speaker 1: to glass him, I'm not gonna hit him with a
Speaker 1: beer jug. I'm just going to walk out. And that's
Speaker 1: what he did. And he turned on his heel and
Speaker 1: he walked away from that whole scene, and he left
Speaker 1: fantasies of revenge behind and he became a very peaceful,
Speaker 1: nature loving fellow who tried to put all that traumatic
Speaker 1: stuff behind him. But you can tell that the book
Speaker 1: is probably the product of a very wounded psyche. That
Speaker 1: this guy has been full of fear as a kid,
Speaker 1: and hatred and all those things and love that the
Speaker 1: book is his attempt to try and come to terms
Speaker 1: with a very dangerous past. The book is called The Outside.
Speaker 1: It's by Larry Blair and Jeremy Goring. It's published by
Speaker 1: Penguin Books. And we'll have a link in the description
Speaker 1: where you can find out more.
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening. Life and Crimes is a Sunday Herald
Speaker 2: Sun production for True Crime Australia. Our producer is Johnty Burton.
Speaker 2: For my columns, features and more, go to herold'sun dot
Speaker 2: com dot au, forward slash Andrew Rule one word For
Speaker 2: advertising inquiries.
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Speaker 2: Podcast's sold and if you want further information about this episode,
Speaker 2: links are in the description.