Speaker 1: Appoch Production.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Real Crime with Adam Shand. I'm your host,
Speaker 2: Adam Shand. Let's talk about a.
Speaker 3: Murder mystery Today.
Speaker 2: August third, nineteen ninety eight, a small businessman in the
Speaker 2: motor trade, Gianni John Ferlan, was on his way to
Speaker 2: work in Melbourne's North. The forty eight year old was
Speaker 2: driving his white Suberu Liberty sedan north along Lawrenceon Avenue
Speaker 2: near Merlinston Railway station.
Speaker 3: When it exploded.
Speaker 2: The force of the explosion killed John instantly, catapaulting his
Speaker 2: vehicle fifteen meters down the road, shattering nearby shop windows
Speaker 2: and spraying debris over three hundred meters away.
Speaker 3: The power of the blast breaking windows of houses and
Speaker 3: shops along the quiet street.
Speaker 2: But miraculously nobody else was physically injured. At first, it
Speaker 2: was thought to be an accident, an exploding LPG tank perhaps,
Speaker 2: but Furlin's car didn't run on gas. He'd been killed
Speaker 2: with a huge car bomb. A deadly car bombing in
Speaker 2: Melbourne's North remains one of Australia's most baffling unsolved mysteries.
Speaker 2: That murder is still unsolved all these years later. Victoria
Speaker 2: Police have recently increased a one hundred thousand dollars reward
Speaker 2: to one million dollars for information about who was responsible.
Speaker 4: Senior police say they're refusing to give up until those
Speaker 4: responsible are brought to justice.
Speaker 2: In twenty eleven, Arson and Explosive detective Tina Kemp reviewed
Speaker 2: the case and knows more about it than anyone else
Speaker 2: who wasn't involved in it. It's a case that she
Speaker 2: can't let go, and I'm pleased to welcome her into
Speaker 2: the real crime studio, can I?
Speaker 3: Tina?
Speaker 1: Adam? How are you good?
Speaker 3: Thanks?
Speaker 2: Of all the cases you covered in your career, this
Speaker 2: one I think is the one that you've always felt
Speaker 2: was left incomplete, correct.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there are so many more avenues of inquiry to
Speaker 4: cover some of the bases. It's just one of those
Speaker 4: ones that doesn't have a clear motive, and that's been
Speaker 4: really tricky to navigate through that.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think you once said that it was like being
Speaker 2: given a book without the final chapters.
Speaker 4: Correct, And even some of the chapters in between are
Speaker 4: missing as well, and you just have to find which Well,
Speaker 4: sometimes you've given chapters are not even relevant, so you've
Speaker 4: got to work out which ones belonging the book and
Speaker 4: which ones don't even so. It's quite a bit to
Speaker 4: this one, but it's really interesting and I was thoroughly
Speaker 4: engaged and enjoyed working on it, and at times I thought, God,
Speaker 4: I can't believe I'm getting paid to do this is fabulous.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it would have been nice if you were able
Speaker 2: to put some people behind bars. There's still a possibility
Speaker 2: of it, because there are still suspects out there in
Speaker 2: this murder, and it is a very tricky one because
Speaker 2: the motive is not clear. John Ferlin was not an
Speaker 2: underworld figure. He was a small businessman. He had his
Speaker 2: normal range of disputes and issues with people, but nothing
Speaker 2: that seemed to amount to a motive for murder. And
Speaker 2: there is this sort of cast of characters we really
Speaker 2: should work through before we get too much further. The
Speaker 2: main suspect that you were presented with was a fellow
Speaker 2: called Domenico Italiano, who was a half pied gangster from Carlton.
Speaker 2: His grandfather had been reputed to be the head of
Speaker 2: the Italian mafia back in the fifties, but Domenico was
Speaker 2: not of the same milk whatsoever. He was more of
Speaker 2: a con man and he was operating what I believed
Speaker 2: to be illegal car raffles back in the day where
Speaker 2: there would raffle a car in a bogus raffle, and
Speaker 2: really it was a way of selling a vehicle to
Speaker 2: somebody at a cheap price and pretend that it was
Speaker 2: the winnings of a raffle.
Speaker 3: Have I got that right?
Speaker 4: Yes, from I didn't delve in too much into the
Speaker 4: raffle side of things that had already been written off earlier.
Speaker 4: But in your previous inquiry so that you pinpointed that
Speaker 4: John had actually been offered a car in amongst that
Speaker 4: to pay a debt back to Dominica Taliano. So that
Speaker 4: sort of changes things in that respect as well.
Speaker 2: Because John had a car yard next to his house
Speaker 2: there on Sydney Road in Coburg, and Italiano was leasing
Speaker 2: that car yard, and of course he fell behind in
Speaker 2: the rent and there was a dispute over that. And
Speaker 2: the theory that you investigated was that this bogus raffle
Speaker 2: was going to be he was going to become the
Speaker 2: winner John was in lieu of the rent that he owed,
Speaker 2: at least Taliano owed.
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 4: I believe that specific aspect was something that you uncovered
Speaker 4: when you were looking at it yourself a while back.
Speaker 4: We certainly did look at the raffles, and we looked
Speaker 4: at the broken lease on the car yard next to
Speaker 4: his place.
Speaker 1: There was a whole.
Speaker 4: Host of things that we did look at, and to me,
Speaker 4: it seems with Dominique Taliano, it wasn't perhaps just the
Speaker 4: one thing, but it was that Furlan had become a
Speaker 4: bit of a thorn in his side in a number
Speaker 4: of ways. He owed him money, you know, they'd broken Carli's,
Speaker 4: he was trying to get another caryard.
Speaker 1: Maybe that raffle came into it.
Speaker 4: And yeah, so I think he'd just become a little
Speaker 4: bit of thorny's side and thought that perhaps life was
Speaker 4: easier for dominic if John Ferlan.
Speaker 3: Wasn't in it, well if he killed him.
Speaker 2: And I think that was the problem for police, that
Speaker 2: none of these things seemed to amount to a substantial
Speaker 2: enough motive for murder. And there were other issues apparently
Speaker 2: that Ferlin had given up Italiano to fair trading over
Speaker 2: these raffles, and also some other dodgy stuff that Italiana
Speaker 2: was doing in the car trade.
Speaker 4: Yes, that's correct, and John Ferlin had been charged and
Speaker 4: find himself. I didn't think it was a massive amount,
Speaker 4: maybe eight hundred dollar fine or something thereabouts. I think nineties.
Speaker 4: I'd have to go back to the file if I
Speaker 4: had it. In ninety six ninety seven thereabouts, it was
Speaker 4: reported who particularly annoyed that others such as.
Speaker 1: Italiano and other people were still.
Speaker 4: Doing similar sort of things and getting away with it,
Speaker 4: and that rubbed him the wrong way. So apparently became
Speaker 4: quite a nuisance by ringing almost weekly or perhaps even
Speaker 4: more to make complaints about these people, and subsequently charges.
Speaker 1: Were laid or fines. There was one I'm aware of that.
Speaker 4: Italiano had somebody else to take the fall for him
Speaker 4: on that one, and that was worth about fifteen grand.
Speaker 4: So we're talking, you know, late sort of ninety so
Speaker 4: that's a fair wack of money back then. And his
Speaker 4: own company, Moldenfield Proprietary Limited, they were also fine. And
Speaker 4: if you look through the list back then, there are
Speaker 4: a few companies that italianas associates were involved in those companies,
Speaker 4: and so I think that's sort of another area as well. Well.
Speaker 2: I try and you mentioned that Ferland was a thorn
Speaker 2: in the side of Italiano. I think Ferloon need though
Speaker 2: he wasn't a crook, but he was a bit of hotthead,
Speaker 2: wasn't he?
Speaker 3: What sort of person was he?
Speaker 4: My understanding was a bit of a hot head and
Speaker 4: a hard businessman, very loyal to his friends. But you know,
Speaker 4: there might be some smallish kind of issues with he
Speaker 4: might sell something that was reconditioned as perhaps better condition
Speaker 4: or knewer than it was. You know, nothing overly massive
Speaker 4: that wouldn't go on in a lot of those kind
Speaker 4: of businesses. I did look into, and other investigators looked
Speaker 4: into whether he did have some sort of criminal activities
Speaker 4: going on. I know the registration of the vehicle that
Speaker 4: he was killed while striving was registered in the country,
Speaker 4: and it kind of seemed a very back door way
Speaker 4: of getting it registered because it was an imported car
Speaker 4: from Japan that shouldn't have been registered in Australia because
Speaker 4: it didn't comply with the standards here. But somehow at
Speaker 4: this country vic Rood's office, the number of the engine
Speaker 4: the number vehicle identification number was entered with a number
Speaker 4: of digits that suited Australia's system. But if it had
Speaker 4: been entered in I think there were seventeen digits in
Speaker 4: one or the other can't remember which way it went
Speaker 4: now with nine digits were required, but he's had seventeen
Speaker 4: or vice versa. So that ended up allowing the car
Speaker 4: to be registered here when it really shouldn't been. It
Speaker 4: should have only been used for parts. So then I
Speaker 4: was looking at did he have a little bit of
Speaker 4: a scam going with that kind of thing? He also
Speaker 4: is a drugs involved I mean that's also always a
Speaker 4: thing we look at, you know, are they importing drugs
Speaker 4: inside these vehicles? Because dominicantly, Taliano and Ferlin used to
Speaker 4: both be at the car auctions. They would see each
Speaker 4: other at those sort of locations as well, so I thought, well,
Speaker 4: are they up to something more that is behind the
Speaker 4: scenes that we.
Speaker 1: Just don't know about. But I could never really find.
Speaker 4: That he was up to anything illegally in that way
Speaker 4: that could have cost.
Speaker 2: Him his life, because I think there was one avenue
Speaker 2: of an inquiry where I know in Melbourne there was
Speaker 2: a lot of heroin dealing going on through used car
Speaker 2: lots where people would deliver heroin around Melbourne using cars
Speaker 2: from lots, and I think that was looked at at
Speaker 2: one moment, but it didn't seem to pan out.
Speaker 4: Correct and also rebirthing vehicles that was pretty big back
Speaker 4: then as well, stolen vehicles that would be altered and
Speaker 4: you know, in a chop shop sort of thing, and
Speaker 4: whether he had been involved in that sort of thing
Speaker 4: as well, But we couldn't really establish anything like that.
Speaker 1: So in the end, it seems that he was just
Speaker 1: a small businessman.
Speaker 4: That wouldn't be like anybody else that walks down the
Speaker 4: street that you would probably meet not thinking twice about.
Speaker 1: So that part is really puzzling.
Speaker 4: The motive and whether it's just that whole mixed bag
Speaker 4: of things that really annoyed Italio and getting focus on
Speaker 4: him when if he was up to something dodgy himself.
Speaker 1: He's not going to want attention from anybody.
Speaker 2: And that was the challenge for investigators, wasn't it, Because
Speaker 2: massive facts, some minor motivations, no conclusive evidence, so very
Speaker 2: difficult to proceed. And when you look at the circumstances
Speaker 2: of the bombing, the car had been parked at Ferlin's
Speaker 2: house on Sydney Road, Coburg over the weekend while he'd
Speaker 2: gone to Tasmania for fishing, so one would presume the
Speaker 2: bomb was planted at that time.
Speaker 4: I believe so they would have had easy access to
Speaker 4: the vehicle at that point. Nobody was staying at the
Speaker 4: house while John was in Tasmania, and there's a lane
Speaker 4: way at the back of the house that I would
Speaker 4: think would be fairly easy access to get over that.
Speaker 4: And I'm aware that one of the back doors wasn't
Speaker 4: locking properly either in the vehicle, so they wouldn't even
Speaker 4: need to break in as such, they just try the doors.
Speaker 4: And they had been doing surveillance, so maybe they might
Speaker 4: have even been aware of some of that minor.
Speaker 1: Detail as well, so they once so inside the yard.
Speaker 4: The yard had a really high fence at the front
Speaker 4: and still to this day as far as I know,
Speaker 4: high fence, high gates or timber so you can't see through,
Speaker 4: So they would have had a nice little protected area
Speaker 4: from anybody.
Speaker 1: Seeing what they were up to.
Speaker 2: And there was a number of cigarette butts found at
Speaker 2: the scene, which I believe that you discovered in the exhibits,
Speaker 2: and I think they've been compared on DNA databases and
Speaker 2: so forth and really haven't come up with any matches.
Speaker 1: That's great.
Speaker 4: Well, as far as I know, two of them have
Speaker 4: John Fillin's profile were matched to two of them, and
Speaker 4: maybe some partials on some of the other. And I
Speaker 4: did request further testing, and I think Jeff Marr recently
Speaker 4: mentioned that they were sort of being retested again, and
Speaker 4: I had tried to and it might be that they
Speaker 4: regularly do that run that through anyway on these sort
Speaker 4: of major unsolves, but nothing of interest as far as.
Speaker 1: Who might have been in the yard. But I had
Speaker 1: always wanted to perhaps.
Speaker 4: Put out a call, and you know, this is not
Speaker 4: something that I'd run past the bosses as far as
Speaker 4: put out a bit of a call to his friends
Speaker 4: and family who would have been in the front yard smoking.
Speaker 4: They knew that they were in the art smoking and
Speaker 4: volunteer their DNA so that they could be identified at
Speaker 4: least and not one hundred percent eliminated. They could be
Speaker 4: involved who we don't know, but at least it might
Speaker 4: narrow down who contributed to those cigarette butts on the ground, right.
Speaker 2: And Jeff Marr was your senior sergeant back at Arsenal
Speaker 2: and Explosives. He's now working at the Academy, still involved
Speaker 2: in this case, helping out. And again it's one of
Speaker 2: those cases that just defies solution.
Speaker 3: It stays in people's minds. Now.
Speaker 2: The interesting thing about the way the bomb is detonated
Speaker 2: is I understand it was that it wasn't a timing device,
Speaker 2: it wasn't a pressure device. It had to be detonated
Speaker 2: manually with a line of sight. And there were two vehicles,
Speaker 2: one red land cruise I believe or missing patrol that
Speaker 2: was seen in the area before the day and on
Speaker 2: the day, and there was a guy driving it who
Speaker 2: had a very particular eagle tattoo on one forearm. This
Speaker 2: was seen and I guess it was believed that this
Speaker 2: one might have detonated the bomb.
Speaker 1: Yes, that's correct.
Speaker 4: And he does appear throughout the investigation and turns up
Speaker 4: again after as far as the inquiries goes. He even
Speaker 4: inserts himself into the whole inquiry by attending at St.
Speaker 4: Kildo Police Complex, which was the headquarters for the crime
Speaker 4: department back then. Yet very interesting character. I didn't get
Speaker 4: to meet him, unfortunately. He committed suicide a few weeks
Speaker 4: after his last contact with Jeff mar And he would
Speaker 4: confess to all sorts of things then sometimes retract that.
Speaker 4: But then if he did scratch around and have a
Speaker 4: bit of a look to try and corroborate things. Sometimes
Speaker 4: some of the most amazing things that he was confessing
Speaker 4: to were actually real. I give you the main example
Speaker 4: was he put his hand up for a bombing that
Speaker 4: he did at a house in Flemington that I think
Speaker 4: was probably requested or orchestrated by these same people.
Speaker 1: Behind this bomb.
Speaker 4: But he also someone very close to him had committed
Speaker 4: a murder and he helped dispose of the body as
Speaker 4: in this particular fellow, and he phoned police and said,
Speaker 4: if you go out to this particular freeway on the
Speaker 4: side of the freeway, you'll find a body. And in
Speaker 4: the end they had to have a couple of looks
Speaker 4: and they finally found it. He ended up getting charged
Speaker 4: for well, the other person got charged with murder and
Speaker 4: he got charged with helping dispose of the body. So
Speaker 4: you can't just sort of dismiss any of his claims
Speaker 4: because sometimes they were really good information.
Speaker 2: You're talking about Philip Lander, also known as Philip Matthews,
Speaker 2: and he was a young man I think he was
Speaker 2: nineteen at the time or twenty when this car bomb detonated,
Speaker 2: And you're right, it comes in two thousand and four
Speaker 2: to the police unannounced and says I killed John Ferland
Speaker 2: and this doesn't happen. A walk up start to a
Speaker 2: confession like this just simply doesn't happen. And Jeff Maher
Speaker 2: it was your boss, interviewed him and some parts of
Speaker 2: his evidence were very compelling. Others were doubtful, and it
Speaker 2: led them to overall have doubts about him. You were
Speaker 2: reading about him in the file and when you mentioned
Speaker 2: the murder there, of course, this was a murder committed
Speaker 2: by his twin brother. Correct, Yes, so he ends up
Speaker 2: giving up his twin brother for a murder. This boy
Speaker 2: liked to confess.
Speaker 4: And I don't know if that was something that he
Speaker 4: would be involved with these things, but then he'd be
Speaker 4: a little bit at odds with himself on what he'd
Speaker 4: done and what to come clean.
Speaker 1: It was with this one.
Speaker 4: With John Ferlan's murder, it was like he wanted to
Speaker 4: get it off his chest. And you know, I don't
Speaker 4: know his motivation for committing suicide where this was part
Speaker 4: of it and it was just the guilt factor and
Speaker 4: maybe other things that he'd done. But I also think
Speaker 4: he and his brother were raised in the school of
Speaker 4: hard knocks, so that I think there's a lot of
Speaker 4: demons in there. For him, and it's funny, but I
Speaker 4: kind of got to like him a little bit, almost
Speaker 4: like he was the underdog, which is kind of weird.
Speaker 4: I've not really felt that towards anybody else that I've investigated,
Speaker 4: or certainly.
Speaker 1: That's got a criminal history like his.
Speaker 4: But it was almost like I wanted him to sort
Speaker 4: of be able to offload this and succeed. But you know,
Speaker 4: already by the time I was anywhere near the file,
Speaker 4: he was long gone.
Speaker 2: Well, it's interesting because he does commit suicide weeks after
Speaker 2: he turns up and kill or rode police headquarters, and
Speaker 2: even the manner of his death if you're a conspiracy theorist,
Speaker 2: could get you excited because he attaches a hose from
Speaker 2: his car exhaust into the vehicle and gases himself like that,
Speaker 2: you know, I mean, if you're a conspiracy theorist, as
Speaker 2: I say, you might say, well, maybe he was killed
Speaker 2: to cover up his confessions, to stop him giving more
Speaker 2: d tale.
Speaker 4: Yes, And that's something that would have been looked at
Speaker 4: it at the time, given the involvement that he'd had
Speaker 4: in this matter, and just is you know, in other
Speaker 4: matters that he'd been involved in and the type of
Speaker 4: people that he mixed with and mingled with. He could
Speaker 4: easily have been the target of somebody, but there was
Speaker 4: nothing established in that respect. It was a non suspicious
Speaker 4: action that I believe he committed suicide.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the toxicology didn't show any sedatives or anything else.
Speaker 2: He might have been compelled to kill himself, not that.
Speaker 1: I'm aware of.
Speaker 4: I did read the autopsy results in that, but I
Speaker 4: don't recall anything other than just the whole situation with
Speaker 4: the car.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think if there had been anything that suggested foul play,
Speaker 2: your bosses would have been strayed on too. I mean,
Speaker 2: Jeff mar being one of the best homicide detectives in
Speaker 2: the state, he would have been right onto this. But
Speaker 2: nothing was found, so that had to be so frustrating
Speaker 2: because there the evidence seemed to stop. And for instance,
Speaker 2: he did talk about other explosive detonators at a property
Speaker 2: up in the country. He did talk about bearing detonators,
Speaker 2: explosives and other items in the country somewhere there yet
Speaker 2: to be found, and that could be critical evidence to
Speaker 2: standing up what he did tell police in the past
Speaker 2: that he was the bomber.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, and I believe that that those items were there
Speaker 4: at some stage. I mean, the investigations earlier did establish
Speaker 4: that he went out to a particular location near where
Speaker 4: he lived many years ago, and he spent time at
Speaker 4: that location, and we did I was involved too with
Speaker 4: a search. We had ground penetrating radar, we had drug dogs,
Speaker 4: explosive dogs to try and establish where that was. And
Speaker 4: at one stage I got very excited because I found
Speaker 4: this nice area there and we thought, oh, we're onto
Speaker 4: something here. But in the end it was just pushing
Speaker 4: and mounding for where they bopped off the track for vehicles.
Speaker 1: But I was so hoping that we would find something there.
Speaker 4: But it's often crossed my mind just to go out
Speaker 4: as a little bit of a you know, a member
Speaker 4: of the public and just have a bit of a
Speaker 4: poke around if it's not there. I think it was,
Speaker 4: and that's where some people will know. The friends of
Speaker 4: his and I think even his brother were aware of
Speaker 4: what was there, as Phil Matthews himself said that there
Speaker 4: were things in there, like maps of where he was
Speaker 4: supposed to do the surveillance on Ferlin. There were explosive
Speaker 4: leftover Balaclavi's and you know, all sorts of things. A
Speaker 4: good little crooks kit and that'd be magnificent to be
Speaker 4: able to find.
Speaker 2: Well, because you'd probably have DNA on there as well.
Speaker 2: And you could, of course, you've got his twin brother
Speaker 2: who's still alive. You could compare the DNA to him
Speaker 2: and say, well, this is Phil Matthew's little cachet.
Speaker 4: Yes, And that was going just briefly back to the
Speaker 4: cigarette butts. That was something I thought, Oh, I wonder
Speaker 4: if any of these cigarette butts were Phil Matthews and thought, oh,
Speaker 4: only he had an evil twin brother who already had
Speaker 4: his profile on the system. And I was like, oh, okay,
Speaker 4: maybe not evil. That's probably well, I don't know, he's committed.
Speaker 3: For so I think we can call him out.
Speaker 4: He's committed murder, so he's probably not squeaky clean, and
Speaker 4: you know, he's an identical twin And unfortunately there there
Speaker 4: was no match there.
Speaker 2: So that was always the challenge to connect Philip Matthews
Speaker 2: with Domenico Italiano, who the theory went, had ordered the murder.
Speaker 2: And as I talked to people when I've been looking
Speaker 2: this case over a number of years, I started to
Speaker 2: get a profile of Matthews as someone who was incredibly
Speaker 2: willing and wanted to do this wasn't seeking even there's
Speaker 2: no discussion of money, And I wonder whether there's a
Speaker 2: discontinuous link between Matthews and Italiano, whereby some people talk
Speaker 2: to Philip Matthews while he's in jail and say, you
Speaker 2: could make a name for yourself by blowing up this individual,
Speaker 2: he goes and does it. It may not have been
Speaker 2: directly ordered by Italiano, even though he benefited from that.
Speaker 3: Do you think that's possible.
Speaker 4: Part of the investigation did look at whether there was
Speaker 4: talk and we never could quite confirm it whether he
Speaker 4: actually did the Flemington bombing A is a bit of
Speaker 4: a run up to this one to show that he
Speaker 4: could do it and then he would do it, and
Speaker 4: also that by also confessing to that that was another
Speaker 4: situation where he's gone in and said, oh, you know,
Speaker 4: I did that bombing and he ended up being locked
Speaker 4: up as a result of that. But there was some
Speaker 4: suggestion that that was so that he could be inside
Speaker 4: to have the discussion with these two particular people that
Speaker 4: were already inside, to have that approach made through them.
Speaker 1: So it's a little bit of an obscure kind of
Speaker 1: way of going about it.
Speaker 4: But I did look at those people and they were
Speaker 4: in prison at the same time, and he gave a
Speaker 4: location in the prison where that conversation took place. So
Speaker 4: I checked those units and the floor plan and everything
Speaker 4: to see if that could have taken place at that location.
Speaker 1: So we did have a look at that.
Speaker 2: I've actually corroborated that with another sawce who knew both
Speaker 2: Ferl and Italiano. Those individuals did have links to Italiano
Speaker 2: and could well have been the organizers and the urgers
Speaker 2: for Matthews to do what he did. So it's fascinating
Speaker 2: and of course we should just go to Italiano to
Speaker 2: ask him what happened, but we can't because, as luck
Speaker 2: would have it, he was jailed. In fact, Jeff Maher
Speaker 2: when he was looking at these dodgy raffles as part
Speaker 2: of the film and investigation that well, here's some offenses here,
Speaker 2: and Italiana was charged, went to jail, and when he
Speaker 2: came out, he decided to visit the wife or girlfriend
Speaker 2: of his former cell mate, which is a bit cheeky.
Speaker 3: What happened then, well.
Speaker 4: My understanding is there was a little blue pill involved
Speaker 4: with a session with this lady and he died in
Speaker 4: the process of having an enjoyable afternoon or evening with her.
Speaker 1: So that was the end of Dominique.
Speaker 3: Taliano died on the job.
Speaker 1: Yes, this is a case that just keeps on giving.
Speaker 4: There some things in it that you you know, it's
Speaker 4: like stranger than fiction sort of thing. You couldn't make
Speaker 4: some of this up, or if only an egle twin brother,
Speaker 4: or this sort of death of the main suspect. So
Speaker 4: it's like somebody's written it for a TV series, but
Speaker 4: it's real.
Speaker 2: And what struck me when I was in Perth, I
Speaker 2: had a good look at the killing of Don Hancock
Speaker 2: and he's mate Louis Lewis ex Coppers. That was in
Speaker 2: two thousand and one, first of September, and the bomb
Speaker 2: in that case was very, very similar to the bomb
Speaker 2: that was used to kill John Ferland. The large amount
Speaker 2: of explosives set under the passenger seat, slightly different mechanism
Speaker 2: for detonation, but I think there was enough similarities for
Speaker 2: police and Victoria to go Matt's notes with Western Australia
Speaker 2: to see if there's still a bomb maker at large somewhere.
Speaker 1: That's correct.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it certainly didn't go and noticed the similarities and
Speaker 4: our expert here, John calliher very very experienced and very
Speaker 4: intelligent man, is probably one of my.
Speaker 1: Most favorite people in the world.
Speaker 4: He and his equivalent in Western Australia, they did compare
Speaker 4: notes a lot. I think Western Australia learned a lot
Speaker 4: from the way that the investigation was conducted here, and
Speaker 4: some of those similarities are very very similar that if
Speaker 4: it's not the same person, you have to think that
Speaker 4: they had knowledge from that person or some sort of
Speaker 4: extension of it, because it's there are too many similarities
Speaker 4: just you know, even to the placement location in the
Speaker 4: car to be completely coincidental that we just don't have
Speaker 4: that many of the bombings for it to be too.
Speaker 1: Out of two kind of thing.
Speaker 3: And car bombings are very rare in Australia.
Speaker 2: And if you have skills like this and other people
Speaker 2: will want to hire you, I think that would be
Speaker 2: a very reasonable line of inquiries. So that's one of
Speaker 2: the interesting things. Like Matthews is dead, obviously, Furland's dead,
Speaker 2: Italiano's dead. Who do we charge now if there's anything
Speaker 2: coming forth, and you've got a couple of options. If
Speaker 2: there is the technician who supplied the materials knew how
Speaker 2: they were going to be used. There's an accessory. And
Speaker 2: what I find fascinating is that we still have Philip
Speaker 2: Matthew's ex girlfriend, and we actually doorknocked the street where
Speaker 2: he used to live and talk to the neighbors who'd
Speaker 2: been there for a million years, and they said, yes,
Speaker 2: there was all kinds of funny goings on at that house.
Speaker 2: There were people coming and going, there was cars, and
Speaker 2: there was equipment going in and out. So it seems
Speaker 2: like there was something criminal going on there. And Matthew's girlfriend,
Speaker 2: while not being involved in it in any way, she
Speaker 2: was never a suspect, but she will have information that
Speaker 2: could eventually close this case.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, and it would be wonderful as she would come
Speaker 4: forward and even Phil's twin brother to finish off what
Speaker 4: seemed to be trying to do, to offload it from
Speaker 4: his conscience. And his girlfriend at the time was very staunch,
Speaker 4: and even after they split up, she still wouldn't divulge
Speaker 4: much in.
Speaker 1: The way of information. And there's various reasons that we
Speaker 1: know she knew more.
Speaker 4: She was already talking about it being a bombing before
Speaker 4: it was known to be a bombing. Initially, it was
Speaker 4: thought to be an LPG tank that had exploded in
Speaker 4: the vehicle, but the car wasn't fitted with a vehicle.
Speaker 1: It didn't come out till later in the day.
Speaker 4: As far as I'm aware that it was actually a
Speaker 4: bomb that had occurred, but she apparently had been referring
Speaker 4: to it as a bombing prior to that being known
Speaker 4: in the public, so that I thought was very interesting.
Speaker 4: But you know, this has not really come directly from her,
Speaker 4: but she would be able to provide a lot of information.
Speaker 4: And also the associates. There's an associate that Phil had
Speaker 4: back at the time I think would be able to
Speaker 4: help with some information about Phil and what he was
Speaker 4: up to, what he was capable of with as far
Speaker 4: as putting where could he put a bomb together? Would
Speaker 4: he have known? Would he know where to go and
Speaker 4: get the resources or get the components that he needed
Speaker 4: for the bomb? And I think that person is it's
Speaker 4: probably pretty key as well. The girlfriend, his twin brother,
Speaker 4: and this particular person I've got in mind, I think
Speaker 4: could really advance investigation well.
Speaker 2: And there's one million reasons to come forward now I'd
Speaker 2: like to keep working out so I can claim the
Speaker 2: rewards somehow. If there's a way of doing it. And
Speaker 2: it's funny how there are quite a lot of these
Speaker 2: million dollar rewards in Victoria. They're very rarely paid out,
Speaker 2: but I think this one is something that is one
Speaker 2: that could be paid out.
Speaker 3: And what would your advice be.
Speaker 2: Sometimes people are too close to crimes they and they
Speaker 2: fear that they might be prosecuted as well. But I
Speaker 2: think if they're lesser offenses, there's usually something that can
Speaker 2: be done so their information can be used and they
Speaker 2: can avoid prosecution.
Speaker 1: That's my understanding of it.
Speaker 4: I mean to be honest, I get most of my
Speaker 4: information on that from just TV shows myself. I don't
Speaker 4: know that much about what is on offering that respect,
Speaker 4: but I believe they'd be able to come to some
Speaker 4: agreement and understanding where they'd either not be prosecuted, or
Speaker 4: there might be lesser charges, or there'd be some trade
Speaker 4: off where the information that they could provide be more
Speaker 4: valuable to investigators than them staying silent.
Speaker 1: So it's certainly something.
Speaker 4: That would be good for them to discuss and then
Speaker 4: they can make that informed decision whether they would want
Speaker 4: to take it any further or not.
Speaker 3: We'll leave it there, Tina, Thank you so much, for
Speaker 3: your time today.
Speaker 1: You're very welcome and good luck with it all.
Speaker 2: That was Tina Kemp, the detective who reviewed the murder
Speaker 2: case of John fernand blown up in a car bomb
Speaker 2: back in nineteen ninety eight. There is a million dollars
Speaker 2: on office, so if you can help in this case,
Speaker 2: maybe send me an email first, but you can also
Speaker 2: call the police. A crime stoff is one eight hundred,
Speaker 2: triple three, triple zero. Your information will always be treated
Speaker 2: as confidential, but you can also email me if you
Speaker 2: like as well. I'd like to know what happened to
Speaker 2: myself as with Tina, So Adam Shand writer at gmail
Speaker 2: dot com, thank you for listening. This has been real
Speaker 2: crime with Adam Shanmed. This is Adam Shand signing off.
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening.