Speaker 1: Last week on Life and Crimes, Rick Wenzelis bought quite
Speaker 1: a few race horses, and he bought ones that did
Speaker 1: look like each other, and only one of them was
Speaker 1: the good horse code of pennzaluss have a closer look,
Speaker 1: and he has a close look, and he realizes it's
Speaker 1: all the same horse. And Rinzalez says, he's two envelopes.
Speaker 1: Here's a thin one and there's a fat one. If
Speaker 1: you choose the thin one, you put it in your pocket.
Speaker 1: After today, we don't worry about it. If you take
Speaker 1: the fat one, you're one of the team. I'm Andrew Rule.
Speaker 1: This is Life and Crimes. Last week we looked at
Speaker 1: the rise and fall and rise again really of Stephen Wood,
Speaker 1: known throughout racing as the ringing jockey from the notorious
Speaker 1: regal Vista Royal School ringing at Castadon circa nineteen seventy,
Speaker 1: but who was also involved in several other ringings before
Speaker 1: and after those events. This time we look at how
Speaker 1: it all unraveled for Stevie, who is these days regarded
Speaker 1: as one of the most entertaining and funny and oddly
Speaker 1: enough honest people that you'd ever met. Of course, as
Speaker 1: many listeners will know. It all comes to a grinding
Speaker 1: halt when Rick Renzalez good Horse, the ringing Horse Code
Speaker 1: of Pen, actually pulls up the lame after a race
Speaker 1: at I think would end or somewhere, and Stevie said
Speaker 1: that this horse needs a spell, he needs to be
Speaker 1: looked after whatever. And the trainer and the trainer's assistant,
Speaker 1: no one was willing to argue with Rick Renzealeb because
Speaker 1: he was a bad tempered, foul mouthed, you know, semi
Speaker 1: violent sort of semi gangster, and none of them wanted
Speaker 1: to tell him that his good horse, Code to Pen
Speaker 1: had a problem. And what the trainer did, rather than
Speaker 1: work the horse and gallop him and all that because
Speaker 1: of this suspect leg, he swam him and swam him
Speaker 1: and swam him and hoped that he would stay fit
Speaker 1: enough and that his leg would recover and so on.
Speaker 1: And Renzella mounted what could have been and what he
Speaker 1: planned to be a massive plunge in Sydney, ringing in
Speaker 1: Coda Pen the good Horse for a no good horse
Speaker 1: called Red Dean or Red Iron Rid and Steve Wood
Speaker 1: tells the story that he cantered this horse out out
Speaker 1: into the straight at Randwick got over on his neck
Speaker 1: and he thought, oh no, this horse is jarring. I
Speaker 1: can feel jarring coming up through that body leg. He's
Speaker 1: not right. He's going to go wrong. He'll probably break down.
Speaker 1: But what'll I do. The money's on. I've got to
Speaker 1: get him scratched because he knew that Renzala will have
Speaker 1: backed this horse around Australia with in the doubles and
Speaker 1: all the rest of it. He gets around to the start,
Speaker 1: and because he's a relatively unknown Melbourne or Victorian jockey
Speaker 1: riding against the cream of Sydney's greatest jockeys, Ethel Mulley,
Speaker 1: George Moore, all those sort of guys, he hasn't got
Speaker 1: any pull, any currency, any credibility with them. When he
Speaker 1: gets around to the start, he says, excuse me, sir,
Speaker 1: to the starter, I think my horse is not right.
Speaker 1: I can feel the jarring in him, and I think
Speaker 1: he's lame. And they get him to get off, and
Speaker 1: then they lead the horse back and forth for the
Speaker 1: club vet or the starter or somebody, and that official says,
Speaker 1: oh no, he's all right, And had Steve would have
Speaker 1: been a better known senior jockey, particularly a Sydney jockey,
Speaker 1: they would have taken his word for it, but they
Speaker 1: wouldn't because he was a no name jockey, so they
Speaker 1: force him to ride in the race. So he gets
Speaker 1: back on the horse, he jumps out, he's drawn wide.
Speaker 1: He tries to lead the field to the first turn
Speaker 1: and the horse seems to go all right, but in
Speaker 1: the home straight when he puts the pressure on, he
Speaker 1: feels it go wrong. A rider ranged up beside him
Speaker 1: and would said, there's two hundred innutes for you if
Speaker 1: you'd drop back and let me win, But it was
Speaker 1: too late. The whole field overtook him and his horse,
Speaker 1: his actual horse, real name, cod of Pen, pulled up
Speaker 1: absolutely lame on three legs, and I don't think of
Speaker 1: a raced again. He certainly didn't race for a long time.
Speaker 1: But that was a very bad day for the ringing merchants,
Speaker 1: and one that Steve would sensed was avoidable because the
Speaker 1: horse should have been pulled out earlier. They all go
Speaker 1: back to a flat that they've rented there, and he
Speaker 1: said the murder was pretty down, and he walked in.
Speaker 1: He was last there, and Rangela says, oh, here comes
Speaker 1: out of jock and he grabs a pistol from Fred
Speaker 1: from Sydney. He was there, the armed bodyguard. He grabs
Speaker 1: his pistol and points it at Steve Wood and says, ah,
Speaker 1: your little bastard, and then laughs. It was all a joke.
Speaker 1: And so they licked their wounds and they went back
Speaker 1: to Victoria to do it all again. And what happened,
Speaker 1: as most people know, is that Renzella, having broken down
Speaker 1: his good horse code of pen, went and bought another
Speaker 1: good horse called regal Vista. And regal Vista was a
Speaker 1: bit too good. He was almost a champion. He won
Speaker 1: a list of stakes he'd won or run placings in
Speaker 1: the most elite sprint races in Victoria. He was one
Speaker 1: of Australia's best ten sprinters probably and he'd hit a
Speaker 1: sort of age about six year old, where he could
Speaker 1: be bought. And Renzela paid what was then a considerable
Speaker 1: some for him six thousand dollars, which these days might
Speaker 1: be like paying one hundred and twenty thousand something like that,
Speaker 1: and he had a plan to ring him in I
Speaker 1: think in South Australia. But meanwhile he wanted to ring
Speaker 1: him in at Casteradon in Western Victoria. And as everyone knows,
Speaker 1: that is the ring in where Rick Renzella came unstuck
Speaker 1: because he ran him under the name Royal School. Royal
Speaker 1: School was another one of his many slow black horses
Speaker 1: that looked like CODEA Penn. It looked like Code Penn,
Speaker 1: but it did not look like regal Vista. Bad mistake.
Speaker 1: The other thing about regal Vista, he was, apart from
Speaker 1: being a really good looking, handsome horse with a beautiful head,
Speaker 1: the sort of horse that race govers and racing people
Speaker 1: would recognize, he had a big scar on his rump
Speaker 1: and it was from a paddock accident as a young horse,
Speaker 1: and the scar was quite distinctive. If you'd seen him
Speaker 1: once somewhere, you'd know him from the scar. And of
Speaker 1: course at Castidon Races, this wise old trainer Jim Serk
Speaker 1: sees the horse and knows it's regal Vista, backs the
Speaker 1: horse and that starts a bit of a rush among
Speaker 1: the bookies, which of course really throws out the re
Speaker 1: Renzala plan of backing it on the tab in doubles,
Speaker 1: which is what he's done, because the money goes on
Speaker 1: on course. Jim Serk started a gold rush when wise
Speaker 1: old bookmakers saw Jim Serke backing this horse, they thought, oh,
Speaker 1: I don't know what's happened here, but if Serk's backing it,
Speaker 1: we should, so they'd send their runners over to back
Speaker 1: it with other people, and then other punters would notice
Speaker 1: that it was being backed and the price was being
Speaker 1: wound in shorter, and so the more money that went on,
Speaker 1: the shorter got, the shorter got, the more money went on.
Speaker 1: And of course when it wins, as it does beating
Speaker 1: an absolute crackerjack local bush champion trained by a very
Speaker 1: fine trainer from the Western district, these stewards are most
Speaker 1: interested in the events because it's been backed off the map.
Speaker 1: It's one and it would appear to be highly suspicious,
Speaker 1: particularly because Jim Serk, after collecting his winnings from the bookmakers,
Speaker 1: went to Jack Barling, the trainer of the runner up
Speaker 1: the horses should have won the race, and said, I
Speaker 1: think you were beaten by a ring in, and so
Speaker 1: that put the cat among the pigeons, and that would
Speaker 1: lead to Renzala being charged and getting struck out for
Speaker 1: life and getting jailed. It would lead to Steve Wood
Speaker 1: being struck out for I think twenty years plus two
Speaker 1: years for something else, a penalty that he actually had
Speaker 1: overturned on appeal. In the end, Wood had his penalty
Speaker 1: overturned and was able to return to riding, which was amazing.
Speaker 1: But Renzala was in big trouble. And the second part
Speaker 1: of the Steve Wood story, the one that's not so
Speaker 1: well known, is that Steve of Wood later takes up training.
Speaker 1: He rode successfully as a jockey for a short time
Speaker 1: again after the scandal, but he got injured in a fall.
Speaker 1: Had he not been injured in that fall, he probably
Speaker 1: would have ridden on for some years and gone okay,
Speaker 1: because it basically sort of been forgiven by the racing establishment,
Speaker 1: and a very kind trainer called Brian Courtney offered to
Speaker 1: rehabilitate his reputation by using him as i think a
Speaker 1: secondary stable jockey, so that when other trainers saw and
Speaker 1: other owners saw Brian Courtney putting Wood on his horses,
Speaker 1: they thought, well, if it's good enough for Brian courtney's
Speaker 1: good enough for us. And for a while Steve Wood
Speaker 1: rode fairly successfully against the odds really in Melbourne, but
Speaker 1: then he had a fall and that fall kept him
Speaker 1: out for many weeks, a couple of months say, and
Speaker 1: at the end of that period, trainers have moved on.
Speaker 1: He'd been replaced on good horses with other riders. And
Speaker 1: it's the oldest story in racing. Once you're off the
Speaker 1: scene for a while and lose the plumb rides, it's
Speaker 1: very hard to get back on. And for jockeys, really,
Speaker 1: the wise jockeys know that the best horse mostly wins
Speaker 1: the race, regardless of the jockey. The great art of
Speaker 1: jockeying is to jockey your way onto the best horse.
Speaker 1: You need to push the other jockeys out of the
Speaker 1: way and talk your way into riding the better horses,
Speaker 1: and that is the way the system actually works. Steve
Speaker 1: would realize his time was up as a rider. He
Speaker 1: got sick of it. He took out a trainer's license.
Speaker 1: Steve Wood later remarried as he would a couple of times,
Speaker 1: I think four times, and he took out a trainer's license,
Speaker 1: and he was up in the Northeast. I think he
Speaker 1: was at Aubrey where he finished his riding career and
Speaker 1: started his training career at Aubrey, and he was within
Speaker 1: no time, as they say in racing, eating the paint
Speaker 1: off the walls. He had a big bill down at
Speaker 1: the feed shop. He had farious bills. He had bills
Speaker 1: for renting loose boxes. He had bills everywhere, and he
Speaker 1: couldn't pay them. And he thought, well, there's only one
Speaker 1: thing for this. I better go in for a ring in.
Speaker 1: So i'ld mate Stevie Wood shorter money. He takes up
Speaker 1: ring ins just as Rick Wenzela had. In fact he
Speaker 1: was probably a bit better at them in some respects.
Speaker 1: He took a horse called Tilant up to Orange, and
Speaker 1: of course he did have a better horse to fill
Speaker 1: in for Tilant, and it won the race, and they
Speaker 1: cleaned up about twenty three thousand dollars on the punt
Speaker 1: and cleaned out the bookmakers, all the local bookies at
Speaker 1: the Orange races, and they drove home to all be
Speaker 1: very happy. But of course, you know, after paying off
Speaker 1: a few bills and life goes on, they decided they
Speaker 1: need to do it again. And I actually think he
Speaker 1: did three. He did three in a row. But the
Speaker 1: most notorious one that Steve Wood did was he got
Speaker 1: hold of a slow horse called Foden. I remember this horse, Foden,
Speaker 1: and he obtained a much better horse. I think he
Speaker 1: had somebody else by it. It was called Nordica, a Nordica.
Speaker 1: They both chestnut horses, light chestnuts, similar type sprinters, but
Speaker 1: Nordica was lengths better than Foden, and Foden was actually
Speaker 1: pretty well a pitney horse from down in South Gippsland.
Speaker 1: He bought it from the Hill family, I think, one
Speaker 1: of whom later became a Stuart Mark Hill. And Nordica,
Speaker 1: funnily enough, came from a trainer up in the Arra
Speaker 1: Valley called Wood, no relation to Steve would just by chance,
Speaker 1: and they looked reasonably like each other, and he took
Speaker 1: them to broken him, and the good horse was substituted
Speaker 1: for the slow horse and ran as the slow horse.
Speaker 1: But unlike the Renzala wrought, which was fairly sophisticated, the
Speaker 1: Wrenzala thing relied on having false registration papers so that
Speaker 1: when the stewards checked each runner, they could look at
Speaker 1: its brands and then look at the registration papers to
Speaker 1: make sure it matched. And Renzale's great art as a
Speaker 1: crook was to have beautifully forged registration papers so that
Speaker 1: the papers matched that horse, regardless of the name on it.
Speaker 1: The brand markings and all that matched that horse, which
Speaker 1: made it a pretty good trick. And that was a
Speaker 1: trick that was only knocked out later when they brought
Speaker 1: in a more sophisticated way of identifying the horses. What
Speaker 1: Steve Wood did he didn't have access to good forged
Speaker 1: registration papers, and what he did was the more old
Speaker 1: fashioned ring in, where he would take two horses to
Speaker 1: the races in a horse float and switch them. And
Speaker 1: so he would lead the slow horse in and give
Speaker 1: it a look around and give it a pick of
Speaker 1: grass or whatever, and then lead it back and put
Speaker 1: it on the float and come out with the fast
Speaker 1: horse with the slow horses rug on, so it looked
Speaker 1: the same let's say, same head collar, looking as close
Speaker 1: to the other one as it could. And when it
Speaker 1: was racetime, the theory was that the stewards either wouldn't
Speaker 1: check them properly, or they would have checked the slow
Speaker 1: horses brands early in the day and then would assume
Speaker 1: that everything was okay, and providing they didn't check it
Speaker 1: again after the race, you were home and host. And
Speaker 1: what would happen is if they pulled off a ring
Speaker 1: in successfully, they would lead the horse away after the
Speaker 1: race fairly smartly and pretend to take it to be
Speaker 1: hosed down, and then they would take it out and
Speaker 1: put it in the float and somebody would drive it
Speaker 1: away and get rid of it. Either take both horses
Speaker 1: away or take the fast horse away was the way
Speaker 1: to go. And that was a pretty complicated thing to
Speaker 1: get away with, except you know where, you've got a
Speaker 1: meeting where the steward's a bit lazier or a bit slack,
Speaker 1: or having a few drinks or whatever it might be.
Speaker 1: And on this particular day at Broken Hill, they've pulled
Speaker 1: off this ring in, they've backed the winner, they've got
Speaker 1: the money. But one of the visiting people at Brokenhill,
Speaker 1: would you believe, is a man called Bill Brewer. And
Speaker 1: Bill Brewer was by this stage a mid career racing stewart.
Speaker 1: He's a man in by this stage, he's probably in
Speaker 1: his forties, and he's quite an experienced steward. And he
Speaker 1: sees that this horse has won at big odds and
Speaker 1: won a lot of money, and it's been backed, and
Speaker 1: he's instantly suspicious, particularly when he sees that it's been
Speaker 1: led around by Stephen Wood. Now he knew who Stephen
Speaker 1: Wood was because Bill Brewer had been the young steward
Speaker 1: at Castidon when Rinzala had pulled the Regal Vista Royal
Speaker 1: School wrought several years earlier, and he was suddenly on
Speaker 1: full alert and realized that probably something was up, and
Speaker 1: he warned the local stewarts and there was an inquiry
Speaker 1: and next thing, they've unearthed both horses, and you know,
Speaker 1: the brands don't match, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera,
Speaker 1: and Stevie Wood was banged up. He was charged with
Speaker 1: serious offenses. The racing detectives came and saw him and
Speaker 1: interviewed him all this sort of stuff, and long story short,
Speaker 1: Stevie Wood, who had got away with two ring ins
Speaker 1: on his third one, he didn't get away with it,
Speaker 1: and there was evidence led about the earlier ones because
Speaker 1: bookies put their hands up and said, we remember when
Speaker 1: he won so and so we think it's a ringing,
Speaker 1: so on and so forth, and he ended up doing time.
Speaker 1: He did time. He was locked up in Broken Hill.
Speaker 1: Then he was sent to I think graft and Jail,
Speaker 1: where he did time with serious crooks, including some that
Speaker 1: he got quite friendly with because he was a jockey.
Speaker 1: They quite liked him because jockeys is sort of popular
Speaker 1: with crooks, because crooks love gambling and the reason he
Speaker 1: was kicked out of Broken Hill Jail so quickly was
Speaker 1: that on his first day there, he was adopted by
Speaker 1: these three big, young, tough blugs that were in there
Speaker 1: for something, probably fighting or thievery or both. And I
Speaker 1: think might of them might have been a local rugby
Speaker 1: league player or something like that. So he had a
Speaker 1: little bit of local knowledge, and the prison officers like
Speaker 1: this young guy, local boys, and after lights, Stevie says,
Speaker 1: the guy below him in the bunk below him bangs
Speaker 1: on his bunk because Steve's in the top one, being
Speaker 1: the smallest guy, and he thinks, oh god, what's going
Speaker 1: to happen here? Will kill me? And he said, no, mate,
Speaker 1: we're going for Just drop down on the floor where
Speaker 1: the screws can't see through the so the peepole and
Speaker 1: our friendly screws will open the door for us. And
Speaker 1: he goes, oh, no, I don't want to be in
Speaker 1: an escape. I'll be in all sorts of trouble. I
Speaker 1: don't want to be a wanted man. He said, no problem,
Speaker 1: no problem, it's okay, and so he said just stay low.
Speaker 1: So when they get out in the corridor, the guy,
Speaker 1: his fellow prisoner is in front of him, and he
Speaker 1: drops down low and crawls on his hands and kne's
Speaker 1: really quietly along under the level of the peepoles in
Speaker 1: the other cells. Now it's pretty late at night, it's
Speaker 1: after lights out. Lights out might be nine o'clock, let's say.
Speaker 1: And they creep down to the other end of the
Speaker 1: corridor and they see a pair of blue troup houses
Speaker 1: and black shiny shoes. It's a prison officer, but it's okay.
Speaker 1: It's the tame prison officer, the friend, and he lets
Speaker 1: them out of this door, and they sneak out on
Speaker 1: their hands and knees, and once they get out into
Speaker 1: the yard, they stand up and Steve's completely amused and
Speaker 1: puzzled and alarmed. But there he is with these three
Speaker 1: young blokes and he thinks they're leading a prison break.
Speaker 1: And they said, no, no, it's all right, mate, don't worry.
Speaker 1: So they go over to a side gate and broke
Speaker 1: an hill jail and it's conveniently open. They open it,
Speaker 1: and one of them bolts down to the local pub
Speaker 1: before closing time and gets a dozen cans of Stubbies
Speaker 1: one or the other of beer and brings it back
Speaker 1: and they sit in the park and they drink beer
Speaker 1: in the park until just before midnight when the shift ends,
Speaker 1: when the prison officers shift will end. Then they've got
Speaker 1: to go back in, close the door behind them, sneak
Speaker 1: back into their corridor, drop down again and sneak along
Speaker 1: so no one else sees them, and back into their
Speaker 1: else before the shift ends and the Friendly Water goes
Speaker 1: off duty and less friendly Water starts again. That route
Speaker 1: was discovered within a short time because some knark down
Speaker 1: the street saw one of the guys buying beer and
Speaker 1: realized who he was and dubbed them in and that
Speaker 1: is when they were all sent from Broken Hill to
Speaker 1: higher security jail, in this case Grafton. And so in
Speaker 1: the end, Stevie Wood, the promising apprentice jockey who went
Speaker 1: to the dark side, ended up serving time in jail
Speaker 1: with hardened criminals, including the one I think they called
Speaker 1: him the Woolworths bomber. He was a guy that attempted
Speaker 1: to extort something like a million dollars out of Woolworth's
Speaker 1: by threatening to blow up the store. He met all
Speaker 1: these sort of guys in jail. He peld up with
Speaker 1: one of them and they started One of Australia's first
Speaker 1: tipping services, and when he came out of jail, he
Speaker 1: realized that racing, even if he wanted to pursue racing
Speaker 1: any more, racing was probably not going to allow him
Speaker 1: to be a licensed person, and so Stevie would in
Speaker 1: his late thirties. I think on his third marriage. I
Speaker 1: think his second wife decided she'd leave during the ringing
Speaker 1: scandal and the jail scandal. He took up working construction
Speaker 1: and he learned enough about construction and about business to
Speaker 1: make his way in the world. And he ended up
Speaker 1: owning a motel or more than one, perhaps up on
Speaker 1: the border, and ultimately ended up on the Gold Coast.
Speaker 1: And now he leads a respectable quiet life. He's worked hard,
Speaker 1: he's made reasonable money. He and his wife, who is
Speaker 1: a Thai national, have a nice property in Thailand, and
Speaker 1: they owned some apartments in Queensland and they divide their
Speaker 1: time between the two places. But that is one of
Speaker 1: those rare stories where people who went wrong get their
Speaker 1: life back on track and do not end up dead
Speaker 1: before their time or in jail. Little Stevie Wood got
Speaker 1: out in time. Thanks for listening. Life and Crimes is
Speaker 1: a Sunday Herald Sun production for True Crime Australia. Our
Speaker 1: producer is Johnty Burton. For my columns, features and more,
Speaker 1: go to Heroldsun dot com dot au, forward slash Andrew
Speaker 1: Rule one word. For advertising inquiries, go to news Podcasts
Speaker 1: sold at news dot com dot au. That is all
Speaker 1: one word news podcasts sold And if you want further
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