Speaker 1: Calls me and he says, men died because of what
Speaker 1: Roger Rogerson did. I don't want to talk over the phone.
Speaker 1: Come and see me and I'll tell you the whole rotten.
Speaker 2: Story, Isn't it perfect.
Speaker 3: He's gone down the street and grabbed a willing hooker
Speaker 3: to whack a wig on and played the part for
Speaker 3: fifteen minutes.
Speaker 2: And where we going?
Speaker 1: As I say in the book, Philip Western might have
Speaker 1: fired the gun, might have shot the bank manager, but
Speaker 1: Roger loaded the gun.
Speaker 2: He did.
Speaker 3: I'm Andrew Rule is his life in crimes. Today we
Speaker 3: have a distinguished guest from Sin City. I've long been
Speaker 3: a critic of things that come out of Sydney. You know, criminals, police,
Speaker 3: some judges, a few lawyers. But I've never been guilty
Speaker 3: of criticizing Sydney journos because I've always found that they
Speaker 3: were among the best in the business. And one of
Speaker 3: the best of the best. I'm forced to say this
Speaker 3: because it's true, is Neil Mercer, who is our.
Speaker 2: Guests here today.
Speaker 3: As I was saying to him a few minutes ago,
Speaker 3: he's one of my few contemporaries. Were both the old
Speaker 3: blokes playing in time on Neil mate No, you've distinguished
Speaker 3: yourself by writing a new book which is out any
Speaker 3: minute now, called The Kingpin and the Crooked Cop. And
Speaker 3: some would think it's a well plowed paddock the stories
Speaker 3: about Roger Rogerson and his mate Neddie Smith. But you
Speaker 3: have uncovered fresh layers of material that I personally found
Speaker 3: fascinating and that I think dedicated readers of true crime
Speaker 3: will really appreciate. For any listeners who have lived under
Speaker 3: a rock for the last forty years, Neil, what is
Speaker 3: your five second version of who Roger Rogerson is?
Speaker 2: Perhaps ten seconds?
Speaker 1: Roger Rogerson, detective sergeant in New South Wales armed hold
Speaker 1: up Squad, the most notorious detective of his generation and
Speaker 1: problem in Australian policing history.
Speaker 3: And the stories that really grabbed me was the way
Speaker 3: that you've gone back into history to establish that Roger
Speaker 3: Rogerson was pretty crooked a long time ago.
Speaker 1: That's right. I mean, what I set out to do
Speaker 1: was to get the facts as much as I could
Speaker 1: about Roger Rogerson and ned Smith, because there's a lot
Speaker 1: of misinformation. There are a lot of urban myths, you know,
Speaker 1: there's lots of stuff said that's true, maybe not true.
Speaker 1: I set out to gather original source material, and I
Speaker 1: went back to the seventies with court transcripts, witness statements
Speaker 1: and so on, and started with the shooting of an
Speaker 1: armed robber by the name of Philip Weston in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy six. And I knew very very little about that.
Speaker 1: Roger had boasted about it over the years, but I
Speaker 1: knew nothing about it. Virtually. I went back, went through
Speaker 1: state archives in New South Wales, the National Library in Canberra, and Andrew.
Speaker 1: What I turned up was a revelation to me, and
Speaker 1: I thought I knew Rogerson pretty well.
Speaker 3: Yes, you also found by doing that it led you
Speaker 3: to dig up basically an old retired police officer. And
Speaker 3: I found him a very interesting character. And I'm sure
Speaker 3: you were delighted to find him still alive with his
Speaker 3: marbles and some old files under the bed.
Speaker 1: Who was that It was a detective by the name
Speaker 1: of Ian Whirley, who's now I think eighty six eighty seven.
Speaker 1: He was a contemporary of Roger Rogerson's and going back
Speaker 1: to nineteen seventy six, Ian Whirley and Roger were pretty
Speaker 1: good mates working in the arm hold Up Squad in Sydney.
Speaker 1: Together they are involved in the arrest of this guy,
Speaker 1: Philip Weston, who is an arm dropper. He's robbed a
Speaker 1: bank late in seventy five. They pick him up January
Speaker 1: seventy six, and west And applies for bail in the
Speaker 1: first few months of seventy six, repeatedly, time and time again,
Speaker 1: and at first the armed hold up squad says, no, no,
Speaker 1: he's a dangerous man. If he gets out here will
Speaker 1: offend no way, and he's refused, bail, refused, refused, refused.
Speaker 1: Then Roger gets involved all of a sudden, and he says,
Speaker 1: Philip Weston, the bloke they've arrested, the armed robbery. He's look,
Speaker 1: he's the black sheep of the family. You know, his
Speaker 1: mother and his wife are people of the highest caliber,
Speaker 1: and his mum really needs him out to help her out.
Speaker 1: And his wife's here with their two children. I've been
Speaker 1: to her, I've been to meet them. I've met the wife,
Speaker 1: I've met the children. And he softens. All of a sudden,
Speaker 1: the opposition of the armed hold up squad is gone.
Speaker 1: There's this distinct softening, and you know, eventually he gets bail.
Speaker 1: And it's what I've found. It was manipulated by Rogerson
Speaker 1: for instance, colleague Detective Ian Whirley, the guy who's still
Speaker 1: with us thankfully. Yep, he's been refused bail about six seven,
Speaker 1: eight times, Philip Western Ian Whirley's one of those opposing it.
Speaker 1: Whirley goes on a cruise on a Monday. On Tuesday,
Speaker 1: Philip Weston applies for a new bail hearing, and two
Speaker 1: days later, with Whirley on his cruise and another detective
Speaker 1: who'd opposed it on holiday, Philip Weston gets bail. Amazing, amazing, amazing.
Speaker 1: I mean, he'd been arrested at gunpoint. He had a
Speaker 1: Magnum three five seven, He had a whole pile of weapons,
Speaker 1: false passports, whigs, you know, driver's licenses, the box and dice.
Speaker 1: He was a dangerous man. But he gets this bail.
Speaker 1: And going back through the records, I sort of noticed
Speaker 1: that Whirly, Ian Whirley, the old detective, he'd gone on
Speaker 1: this cruise and Philip Weston had remarkably got bail, and
Speaker 1: I thought, I wonder if he and Whirley's still with us,
Speaker 1: So I tracked him down him a letter popped it
Speaker 1: in the post, good All Australia Post. They came through.
Speaker 1: He calls me and he says, men died because of
Speaker 1: what Roger Rogerson did. I don't want to talk over
Speaker 1: the phone. Come and see me and I'll tell you
Speaker 1: the whole rotten story.
Speaker 2: And I thought that he's beautiful.
Speaker 1: And I thought Jesus. I said, can I come and
Speaker 1: see you tomorrow? And he's a long way out of Sydney.
Speaker 1: He said, no, I can't do it for various reasons.
Speaker 1: I went to see him and he has kept the
Speaker 1: entire police brief of the Philip Western case, the armed robberies,
Speaker 1: the bail applications, he's kept his police diaries.
Speaker 2: Why would you do that, Neil? Why would he do that?
Speaker 1: I think because of what he then told me. He said,
Speaker 1: Western got bail because Roger Rogerson took a fifty thousand
Speaker 1: dollars bribe.
Speaker 3: So that's why he kept it all these years until
Speaker 3: you knocked on his door. That's right, One day an
Speaker 3: honest journo would knock on the door of honest copper.
Speaker 1: And the sting in this Andrew is that after Philip
Speaker 1: Western got bailed back in seventy six, the reason all
Speaker 1: this becomes tragic important is that days after he gets bail,
Speaker 1: in my view, by the manipulation of Roger Rogerson. He
Speaker 1: tries to rob another bank and shoots dead the bank manager.
Speaker 1: So this is huge news in Sydney at the time,
Speaker 1: of course, and Philip Western is then immediately on the
Speaker 1: run and he's tracked down a few days later north
Speaker 1: of Sydney, surrounded by thirty police, heavily armed, bullet professed,
Speaker 1: tear gas and the whole thing, and there's a shootout
Speaker 1: and Western is shot dead.
Speaker 3: He's shot dead a lot, isn't it. Many bullets were
Speaker 3: fired at he.
Speaker 1: There were three police probably two meters away in an
Speaker 1: adjoining house. They were all armed with Remington shotguns. He
Speaker 1: stuck his head out of the top half of his
Speaker 1: body out of a bathroom window, pointed. The police say
Speaker 1: he pointed his shotgun at them. Words were exchanged, but
Speaker 1: very quickly the police opened fire, all three of them
Speaker 1: with their shotguns, and he was dead, dead as a doornail.
Speaker 1: And now we come back to w In Whirley, the
Speaker 1: detective who went on the cruise and comes back to
Speaker 1: find that the bloke he's arrested is now out on
Speaker 1: Balin on the run. He says Rogerson took this fifty
Speaker 1: thousand dollars bribe, and you know, he knew when he'd
Speaker 1: been told that. And I said, well, you know, what
Speaker 1: else do you know? And he said, well, I know
Speaker 1: that Philip Western's mum tried to bribe me. And I
Speaker 1: said what, and he said, yeah, she came round to
Speaker 1: my house when I wasn't there. This is in early
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy six, when he's still in prison. He's trying
Speaker 1: to get out. The old detective said, he left an
Speaker 1: envelope with my daughter who was at home. It was
Speaker 1: school holidays. I get home, I opened the envelope. There's
Speaker 1: four thousand dollars in cash. It's a sweetness, a lot
Speaker 1: of money, a lot of money in nineteen seventy six, absolutely,
Speaker 1: and that's just a sweetner. He was told if he
Speaker 1: plays ball, he said. He refused the money. He told
Speaker 1: his superior at the CIB and not long after that
Speaker 1: he and Rogerson had a massive falling out. He was
Speaker 1: kicked out of the armhold up squad, he says, and
Speaker 1: shortly after he left the police but tracking him down
Speaker 1: filled in some of the gaps of the documents in
Speaker 1: state archives, of some of the stuff at the National
Speaker 1: Library and there was just this extraordinary story which you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, you look at Rogerson, a very clever man.
Speaker 1: In this case. He has, in my view, eating all
Speaker 1: the evidence, talking to people, talking to Ian Whirley, the
Speaker 1: old cop. He's manipulated Crown prosecutors Rogerson. This is he's
Speaker 1: manipulated the court system, judges, He's manipulated some of his
Speaker 1: own many of his own colleagues to get this dangerous bloke,
Speaker 1: Philip Western out on bail. And it all appears to
Speaker 1: be for greed. This is nineteen seventy six, years before
Speaker 1: he really comes to prominence. Yes, for the shooting of
Speaker 1: Warren Land Franchi, which happens in nineteen eighty one, which
Speaker 1: is really the first time his name crops up all
Speaker 1: this stuff. In nineteen seventy six, he I don't think
Speaker 1: his name might have been mentioned once in a newspaper
Speaker 1: report and that was about it.
Speaker 3: But everybody in the police force knew, but the wider
Speaker 3: public had no idea. That's right, talking of manipulation, Neil,
Speaker 3: there's a part of that charade that I found fascinating
Speaker 3: when I read your most excellent book, which we will
Speaker 3: talk about in detail about where to find it.
Speaker 2: And so on. It's a very good book.
Speaker 3: And part of the reason of that is you've uncovered
Speaker 3: these anecdotes that I've never heard before. And one of
Speaker 3: them is in the Western case, Western or Western's advisers
Speaker 3: purport to have produced his wife as well as his mother.
Speaker 3: And Rogerson said, he went around to such and such
Speaker 3: an address and knocked on the door and spoke to
Speaker 3: missus Western. Was it really missus Western or was it
Speaker 3: somebody else?
Speaker 1: That's where I was pretty gobsmacked when I started going
Speaker 1: through this material, Roger says, and he gives evidence about
Speaker 1: this in court. He says, I've met the wife, I've
Speaker 1: seen the children. The wife is of the highest caliber.
Speaker 1: So's the mum. Lovely kiddies, lovely kiddies. And of course
Speaker 1: this goes to bail. This is part of the process
Speaker 1: of before Western actually gets out. And it helps if
Speaker 1: you've got family, wife, kids that need their dad, that
Speaker 1: sort of thing. It helps in a court of law,
Speaker 1: but a judgeable abe be more sympathetic to granting bail,
Speaker 1: it turns out, and the old detective Ian Whirley was
Speaker 1: with Rogerson on this night, and Whirley noticed that the
Speaker 1: wife was wearing a wig that wasn't particularly well adjusted,
Speaker 1: like she'd sort of just put it on in a
Speaker 1: bit of a rush. Turns out that the wife, Roger says,
Speaker 1: is of the highest caliber, and the kids, you know,
Speaker 1: they need his dad. She's an impostor. She's a ringing.
Speaker 1: The real wife is in New Zealand with her kids.
Speaker 1: There are no kids at this flat. Rogerson gives evidence
Speaker 1: that he's seen them, that the wife is there. She's
Speaker 1: an impostor.
Speaker 2: Where was she from, Neil? Where did he find her?
Speaker 1: That's that's one of the things I just couldn't find out.
Speaker 1: Ian Whirley, who knocked on the door with Rogerson that night,
Speaker 1: thought she was an impostor. He thought she was a
Speaker 1: sex worker that he'd met during his police work up
Speaker 1: around King's Cross.
Speaker 2: Oh, I see.
Speaker 1: She'd been hired for to play the role of Catherine Weston,
Speaker 1: the wife, and this is a matter of record in
Speaker 1: the documentsy She's turned up about an hour before Rogerson
Speaker 1: knocks on the door, and she leaves fifteen minutes after
Speaker 1: he does. She's never sighted again. That's pretty good timing, Andrew.
Speaker 3: That is a wonderful thing. Could you possibly make that
Speaker 3: up for a script? About a bent copper, isn't it perfect?
Speaker 3: He's gone down the street and grabbed a willing hooker
Speaker 3: to whack a wig on and play the part for
Speaker 3: fifteen minutes and where we go?
Speaker 1: And she did, and she turned up in court and
Speaker 1: she signed an affidavit with a solicitor and she's in
Speaker 1: court and the barrister's going, he is missus Western, your honor,
Speaker 1: and the Judge's going, well, okay, she's here. It's not
Speaker 1: her at all. It's an impostor. She's a ring in front?
Speaker 2: Did Roger Rogerson?
Speaker 1: He had a huge amount of front. I mean there
Speaker 1: was an old department store in Sydney called Anthony Harden's,
Speaker 1: which was a very very big building. And there's an
Speaker 1: old saying more front than Anthony Horden's, and Roger certainly
Speaker 1: had that, and there was more Andrew there's another little
Speaker 1: twist in this tale because he's granted bail Philip Weston,
Speaker 1: but somebody has to actually post it. So two people
Speaker 1: turn up at Waverley Court, which is the Waverley being
Speaker 1: in Sydney's eastern suburbs, and they say, oh, we're here
Speaker 1: to you know, put up our house as surety and
Speaker 1: the guy gave his name as Ali Barber, and I said,
Speaker 1: this is my wife. The wife doesn't speak at all,
Speaker 1: and bail is granted. The chamber magistrate phones Long Bay
Speaker 1: and you know, looks at all the documents. There is
Speaker 1: a house that's legitimate, and says to the wife, are
Speaker 1: you you know Ali Barber's wife? If she nods, doesn't
Speaker 1: say anything. Mister Barber is in fact real enough. He
Speaker 1: is a real person, but the wife is another impostor
Speaker 1: Ali Barber, who is real. His actual wife was in
Speaker 1: Finland at the time, which is about which is a
Speaker 1: long way from Sydney's eastern suburbs. So you've got you've
Speaker 1: got these ringings, and you've got this evidence by Rogerson
Speaker 1: where you know the armed hold up squad go from no, no,
Speaker 1: he's dangerous, don't let him out, bail should be refused
Speaker 1: to Roger going, oh, you know, he's not such a
Speaker 1: bad blake. The family's nice and all that, and look,
Speaker 1: he probably will turn up if he gets bail. It's
Speaker 1: hard to tell. It's reading his evidence. He's very very clever.
Speaker 1: He doesn't say he should get bail. He just he says,
Speaker 1: you know, look, most people do turn up if conditions
Speaker 1: are imposed, and if they've got family and that sort
Speaker 1: of thing, and it's an extraordinary story. I was just
Speaker 1: gobsmacked when I read a lot of this stuff and
Speaker 1: finally met Ian Whirley, who filled in further detail and shocked.
Speaker 2: Me even more.
Speaker 3: It's hard not to smile about Rogerson's effrontery, but when
Speaker 3: you analyze this for longer than three seconds, you realize
Speaker 3: that this whole charade is probably only to get this
Speaker 3: bloke on the street so that he can then lead
Speaker 3: them to large amounts of cash which they can take
Speaker 3: and distribute among themselves. This is a cabal of bent police.
Speaker 3: That's what it was all about, really.
Speaker 2: Wasn't it.
Speaker 3: And then when he shoots a bank manager dead, they go, well,
Speaker 3: not only we want the cash, but we want him
Speaker 3: dead because we don't want him saying anything about anything.
Speaker 3: So I'd be far better if he's dead on arrival.
Speaker 3: It would solve a lot of problems. And that's indeed
Speaker 3: what happens. They shoot him.
Speaker 1: Indeed it is I mean, Rogerson wants him out to
Speaker 1: get his money. The bank robbery in late seventy five.
Speaker 1: At the end of seventy five, had nabbed, had you know,
Speaker 1: they'd taken eighty nine thousand dollars. In fact, Philip Weston
Speaker 1: had robbed exactly the same bank some months earlier, so
Speaker 1: there was a total of one hundred and sixty five
Speaker 1: grand lying around. Remarkably none of it was ever recovered.
Speaker 1: But you're right, that's why Rogerson wanted him out on bail.
Speaker 1: He was promised a very large amount of money and
Speaker 1: perhaps an ongoing amount of money. And that's why Philip Weston,
Speaker 1: days after getting bail, goes to rob this bank at
Speaker 1: Paramatta and shoots the bank manager dead. And that's what
Speaker 1: Ian Whirley when he phoned me, that phone call that
Speaker 1: I'll never forget, when he said men died because because
Speaker 1: of what Rogerson did. He's talking about Lynn Callahan, who
Speaker 1: was the unfortunate bank manager who was murdered, you know,
Speaker 1: and Weston himself who was shot dead. I don't think
Speaker 1: the police who actually fired the shots knew anything at
Speaker 1: all about Rogerson's Sheerah, No, no, and I think it
Speaker 1: was one or two officers who knew. But of course
Speaker 1: it's your point, is exactly right, Andrew, that once Philip
Speaker 1: Weston had shot this bank manager, he was a complete
Speaker 1: liability for Roger and one of maybe one other He
Speaker 1: does get shot dead in this siege, it does. He
Speaker 1: did have a shotgun on the evidence. That's the evidence
Speaker 1: that I can find.
Speaker 2: What.
Speaker 1: I also got a whole lot of stuff from the
Speaker 1: coroner's court after two years after I originally applied for it.
Speaker 1: But one of the chilling aspects was that Rogerson's intimately
Speaker 1: involved in the planning of this, you know, capture of Western.
Speaker 1: If Western was taken alive at a voca, which is
Speaker 1: about ninety k's north of Sydney on the coast. If
Speaker 1: he was taken alive, guess who was going to drive
Speaker 1: him back to Sydney.
Speaker 2: Roger, of course, what could go wrong?
Speaker 1: He had all bases covered, so in the end that
Speaker 1: obviously wasn't necessary. Western was shot, and as I say,
Speaker 1: I don't think any of the other police there that
Speaker 1: day had any idea of what was going on, And
Speaker 1: it appears the shooting itself was.
Speaker 2: More or less a clean kill.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, he had a gun and he leaned out
Speaker 1: the window and shots had been fired. But yeah, that
Speaker 1: was seventy six and I was just.
Speaker 3: That opens up a whole new early chapter, a prequel.
Speaker 3: If you like to the established and well known stories
Speaker 3: of Roger Rogerson's life and crimes.
Speaker 1: That's right, it's happening years earlier than perhaps we originally thought, certainly.
Speaker 1: And the detail, I mean, it's circumstantial, but it's quite
Speaker 1: compelling to me. As I say in the book, Philip
Speaker 1: Weston might have fired the gun, might have shot the
Speaker 1: bank manager, but Roger loaded the gun.
Speaker 2: He did.
Speaker 3: You've managed to find these new nuggets of information and
Speaker 3: feed them into your narrative of the Rogerson and Neddie
Speaker 3: Smith he's a great friend, it is the wrong word, really,
Speaker 3: but his colleague and crime he's associate, as they say,
Speaker 3: You've fed these nuggets of fresh information into that narrative
Speaker 3: with great skill. And I've found that even though many
Speaker 3: of us are familiar with some of the landmarks of
Speaker 3: the Rogerson story, you've filled in a lot of the
Speaker 3: valleys between the landmarks with this book. And I found
Speaker 3: it fascinating in a way that we don't always find
Speaker 3: true crime books as fascinating as they should be, Neil,
Speaker 3: not all of them are. It does attract a lot
Speaker 3: of amateurs and would.
Speaker 1: Be I really wanted to nail down as much as
Speaker 1: I could and look let's face it, with Roger and Ned,
Speaker 1: the truth is sometimes an elusive commodity. But I really
Speaker 1: wanted to try to nail down as much as I
Speaker 1: could the facts, and to go back to the courts,
Speaker 1: to go back to witness statements from the day, from
Speaker 1: the days of the shootings or the armed robberies or whatever,
Speaker 1: and to use that as a you know, at least
Speaker 1: as a basis for a starting point to then weave
Speaker 1: the story. Because there is so much about written about Roger.
Speaker 1: A lot of it's right, of course, I mean, but
Speaker 1: some of it, a lot of it's wrong. And I
Speaker 1: think it's actually important. This is part of our history,
Speaker 1: particularly in New South Wales history, Sydney history, policing history,
Speaker 1: and I think it's important that we get it right.
Speaker 1: And there's no need. The thing with Roger and Ned,
Speaker 1: there's no need to exaggerate anything about them. There is
Speaker 1: so much material there. They did so many things. Gee,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of there's a lot of intrigue, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of skullduggery. Shenanigan's call it what you will.
Speaker 3: Funnily enough, although I'm from Melbourne, I did spend a
Speaker 3: bit of time with Rogerson but not as much as
Speaker 3: you did, and not as early as you did, obviously,
Speaker 3: because you are the homegrown article there. But he was
Speaker 3: an interesting figure because he could be at times charming
Speaker 3: and entertaining and all that sort of thing. I talk
Speaker 3: to other people about him. You know, you can talk
Speaker 3: to someone about themselves and it only takes you so far.
Speaker 3: They only really give you a very sensited view of themselves.
Speaker 2: But if you talk to others about.
Speaker 3: Them, it can be interesting. And I found an ex
Speaker 3: copper who's in the security industry who knew Rogerson quite well.
Speaker 3: But he also was friendly with Mick Drury, who, of
Speaker 3: course famously was the undercover policeman who Rogerson organized to
Speaker 3: have shot, which was a terrible thing. And that policeman
Speaker 3: said to me that that ex policeman, he said, I'm
Speaker 3: in sort of two minds about Roger. He said, he's
Speaker 3: a wicked, conniving, whole blooded reptile, and yet I knew
Speaker 3: him to do genuinely kind things. He said, this is
Speaker 3: what he said, and he gave me examples of that.
Speaker 3: How do you read that? Do you think he was
Speaker 3: had the wool pulled over his eyes.
Speaker 1: Or no, no, not at all.
Speaker 2: That's exactly.
Speaker 1: We rather liked him, That's what people have said to me.
Speaker 1: I met him in late eighty two. I did an
Speaker 1: interview with him for the Sydney Morning Herald. It was
Speaker 1: the first interview he'd done since the shooting of land Franchi,
Speaker 1: you know, and I got to know him over the
Speaker 1: subsect over the next you know what, forty years or so.
Speaker 1: He was I liked him. I mean, there are elements
Speaker 1: of Roger that were very likable. He was good company,
Speaker 1: He did do some good things. And you know, it's interesting,
Speaker 1: Andrew that people sometimes don't really want to hear that.
Speaker 1: They just want the cardboard cut out. Bad guy, evil, wicked.
Speaker 1: And what he did to Mike as he was shocking, terrible,
Speaker 1: was shocking. I mean, you know, there's police who were
Speaker 1: his colleagues who still they believe it, but they can't
Speaker 1: quite bring themselves to believe it, if you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. They're still shaking their heads that one of
Speaker 1: their own could plan and execute the murder of one
Speaker 1: of their own as he stood in his own home
Speaker 1: next to his little girl. As it turns out, he survived.
Speaker 1: He met Michael Drewy, which very thankful for that. But
Speaker 1: when I spoke to Michael the other day, and you know,
Speaker 1: he still in a sense bears some scars of that.
Speaker 2: Of course, as you'd expect.
Speaker 1: It was he almost died. He was so close to death.
Speaker 1: He was so close to death.
Speaker 2: And the dying deposition, of course that he made, that's right,
Speaker 2: put Roger away.
Speaker 1: That was the first real chink in the armor. This
Speaker 1: is nineteen eighty four, mid nineteen eighty four. Michael Drury's
Speaker 1: standing in his kitchen at his home. He shot. He's
Speaker 1: critically wounded. His kids are there, his wife's there. He
Speaker 1: manages to survive, but he's in hospital and they think
Speaker 1: he's going to die. He makes, as you say, the
Speaker 1: dying deposition in which he says Rogerson tried to bribe
Speaker 1: him over a case a drug bust down in Melbourne,
Speaker 1: and you know he spoke to him about it, said
Speaker 1: there was I think fifteen or twenty five thousand, there
Speaker 1: were a couple of amounts mentioned. It was Drury's dying deposition,
Speaker 1: and that's what really started Rogerson's demise because the two
Speaker 1: the earlier shootings, Philip Weston worn Land Francis, he'd survived those,
Speaker 1: but here was a police officer. You know, critically horribly wounded,
Speaker 1: and he made these allegations against the Golden Boy of
Speaker 1: the CIB. A lot of people turned on Drury, which
Speaker 1: must have been terrible for him because they didn't want
Speaker 1: to believe that Roger, you know this, the golden Boy
Speaker 1: could do something like that. And the investigation into the
Speaker 1: shooting of Drury that followed was a fiasco, an absolute debarkle.
Speaker 1: They split it up. They had one lot of cops
Speaker 1: investigating the alleged bribery and another team investigating the shooting
Speaker 1: when they were clearly linked. Nobody knew who was in
Speaker 1: charge of what. One team was raiding somebody's place and
Speaker 1: they weren't telling the other the shooting team and the
Speaker 1: bribery team wasn't telling the other team it was. It'd
Speaker 1: be funny if it wasn't so serious, Andrew, it'd be funny.
Speaker 1: It was just an absolute fiasco the investigation, and in
Speaker 1: the end that was partly the reason, or a big
Speaker 1: part of the reason why Roger was found not guilty
Speaker 1: of the attempt at of Michael Drury. Because the New
Speaker 1: South Wales Police could not investigate the attempted murder of
Speaker 1: one of their own. It still stands as an absolute disgrace.
Speaker 2: It does.
Speaker 3: I note there are many good stories in this and
Speaker 3: many of them, of course involve Neddie Smith, another giant
Speaker 3: figure in crime stories in New South Wales and across Australia.
Speaker 3: Giant in both ways. He was what six foot five
Speaker 3: in the old money and basically he was sort of
Speaker 3: Roger Rogerson's attack dog in some ways, wasn't he?
Speaker 2: He could do the dirty work? Does that makes sense?
Speaker 1: Their relationship was really interesting. I mean, there were some
Speaker 1: Australian Federal Police intercepts telephone intercepts from nineteen eighty three
Speaker 1: where Neddie Smith is phoning Darlinghurst, where Roger is now stationed,
Speaker 1: but Smith knows some of the other cops there. One
Speaker 1: of the main topics was lunch and getting on the grog,
Speaker 1: getting on the I mean, it came up in just
Speaker 1: about every conversation. Other things came up, like ned Smith
Speaker 1: saying to a police officer who was a mate of
Speaker 1: Rogers at Darlinghurst, shall I bring the ten? Shall I
Speaker 1: bring the ten? We can whack it up three ways.
Speaker 1: You probably don't need to be a genius to figure
Speaker 1: out what he was talking about there. And he was
Speaker 1: openly calling them all sorts of four letter words, which
Speaker 1: I obviously can't repeat. But there was this. It was
Speaker 1: like he was one of the boys.
Speaker 2: It wasn't.
Speaker 1: This was not an informant police officer relationship.
Speaker 3: Wasn't saying hello, mister Rogerson. No, no, no, they're all
Speaker 3: gangsters together.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't have spoken to a detective like that. Let
Speaker 1: me give you the tip. He was clearly very familiar
Speaker 1: with them. He was drinking with them, he was getting
Speaker 1: drunk with them on a regular basis.
Speaker 3: And they got him out of several times. I got
Speaker 3: him out of terribly big scrapes, like he'd attack somebody
Speaker 3: with a hammer, or he'd pull a gun on somebody, or.
Speaker 2: He'd do whatever.
Speaker 3: But he would be able to bribe his way out
Speaker 3: through his network of corrupt police.
Speaker 2: Is that right?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 1: Oh, he paid police a lot, and he paid He
Speaker 1: says he paid Roger large amounts. The problem with ned
Speaker 1: Smith is that his central story is absolutely right. He
Speaker 1: was paying bribes and he was committing crimes. His problem
Speaker 1: was a problem for me for others, is that he
Speaker 1: started to embellish everything and put in people who he
Speaker 1: just hated because he wanted to dob on them who
Speaker 1: hadn't taken bribes. It was a sort of a scattergun approach,
Speaker 1: and in the end his word, I'm afraid was sort
Speaker 1: of almost worthless without any corroboration. But I mean Roger
Speaker 1: did him and did Ned smith favors. One of the
Speaker 1: favors was Ned and a bloke called Bobby Chapman had
Speaker 1: tried to do a robbery on a payroll, a bakery payroll.
Speaker 1: This is nineteen seventy six. This is when they first meet,
Speaker 1: actually Smith and Chapman that they botched the robbery, but
Speaker 1: shots are fired and one of the blokes carrying the
Speaker 1: payroll narrowly escapes death, misses his head by a whisker.
Speaker 1: So it's pretty serious. Long story short, they're charged with
Speaker 1: one of them's charged with attempted murder, and you know,
Speaker 1: time goes by. Roger takes a statement from Ned's mate
Speaker 1: Bobby Chapman, saying, oh, yeah, I did fire the shots,
Speaker 1: but it was accidental. The gun went off, I didn't
Speaker 1: mean to sort of thing, which is suss in itself.
Speaker 1: But then when it gets to court, Roger's in the
Speaker 1: witness and he says, I've done further investigation. It wasn't
Speaker 1: Bobby Chapman needs mate who fired the shots at all.
Speaker 1: It was a bloke, this bloke by the name of
Speaker 1: Robert McKinnon. This is astonishing news to the Crown prosecutor.
Speaker 2: Courts adjourned.
Speaker 1: Crown Prosecutor not happy outside court, doesn't believe Rogerson, who says, oh,
Speaker 1: and informants told me this new information that it was
Speaker 1: not needs mate Bobby Chapman who fired the shots, that
Speaker 1: it was this blake, Robert McKinnon. The Crown prosecutor doesn't
Speaker 1: believe him. Roger won't reveal his source. Okay, maybe that's
Speaker 1: fair enough. Well, of course, where's Robert McKinnon, the man
Speaker 1: who did fire the shots allegedly according to Roger and
Speaker 1: his new investigation is new details. Guess what, Robert McKinnon
Speaker 1: has disappeared? Oh no, yes, bad luck, Well, bad luck
Speaker 1: for Robert McKinnon because that was nineteen seventy six and
Speaker 1: he's never been found, seen, heard of since, just disappeared
Speaker 1: off the face of the earth. And the court case
Speaker 1: was aborted and they both got you know, Bobby Chapman,
Speaker 1: the Kaki has got a much lighter sentence thanks to Roger.
Speaker 3: And a bloke that they blamed, and a bloke that.
Speaker 1: They blamed, who conveniently, of course, could not then or
Speaker 1: ever since be found that just gone is.
Speaker 2: So sinister, is it not?
Speaker 1: Not?
Speaker 3: You know, it's full of sinister things, and there's no
Speaker 3: doubt in the end, none of it's funny. But there
Speaker 3: were sort of funny things along the way. One of them.
Speaker 3: I know, it's an old story and we often tell it,
Speaker 3: but you tell it particularly well in the book, and
Speaker 3: that is the time when Roger Rogerson came to the
Speaker 3: rescue of a damsel in distress, and that would be
Speaker 3: Dame Shirley Bassey, who was then singing at Checker's Nightclub.
Speaker 2: He said, is this is this right, witness?
Speaker 1: Well, Roger says, it is that way way back in
Speaker 1: the seventies. He was happened to be walking down I
Speaker 1: think it's Golden Street in the middle of Sydney, Checker's Nightclub,
Speaker 1: very famous nightclub way back then. Lots of international acts
Speaker 1: appeared there. It was an incredibly popular nightclub and also
Speaker 1: favored by detectives from time to time. Shirley Bassey was
Speaker 1: singing there and Roger says, he's walking down Golden Street
Speaker 1: thereabouts and he sees this bloke with a sequined handbag
Speaker 1: bolting out of the nightclub. He says, I gave chase,
Speaker 1: and of course he apprehends this bloke. He was always
Speaker 1: reasonably fit. Roger he grabs, grabs the offender, grabs the handbag.
Speaker 1: The sequent handbag or very expensive handbag. Offender is marched
Speaker 1: off to the slammer. Roger goes back to Checkers and
Speaker 1: he with his Shirley with the handbag, and he says
Speaker 1: to me, and not just to me, but to others
Speaker 1: over the years that Shirley BASSI showed her appre appreciation
Speaker 1: in a very special way. There you go, which may,
Speaker 1: of course be true, Andrew, may not be true. I
Speaker 1: did ask a couple of other members of the armed
Speaker 1: hold up squad from that time if they'd ever heard that,
Speaker 1: and they just looked at me and said, no, never
Speaker 1: heard it before. But it's a story he did tell.
Speaker 1: And look, that was as you said earlier. He was charming.
Speaker 1: He was good company. You could sit down with him,
Speaker 1: have a beer, and he could talk to anybody. He
Speaker 1: could talk to crooks, he could talk to politicians, he
Speaker 1: could talk to all levels of society. He was a
Speaker 1: highly intelligent man, and he is something to me of
Speaker 1: enigma that somebody with so much talent can go so bad.
Speaker 3: A highly functioning sociopath. You'd think you have seen well.
Speaker 1: Well if you put together the words intelligent, charming, manipulative.
Speaker 1: I'm not a psychiatrist psychologist, but they might suggest that
Speaker 1: he's a sociopath. But look, he was. He helped out neighbors,
Speaker 1: he you know, he did. He did good things for
Speaker 1: people he barely knew. As you said earlier, he on
Speaker 1: many occasions displayed great courage and arresting seriously bad men,
Speaker 1: armed robbers, heroin dealers, all that sort of stuff. So
Speaker 1: is this this strange, this enigma that you know, on
Speaker 1: the one hand, there was a lot of good things
Speaker 1: he did and part of his character was admirable. And
Speaker 1: on the other hand, you've got this cold, calculating person
Speaker 1: who can who can arrange the murder or the attempted
Speaker 1: murder of one of his colleagues in his own home.
Speaker 3: Yeah, of innocent people. It's one thing to kill a
Speaker 3: bad crook, quite another to arrange the death of a younger,
Speaker 3: married policeman merely over.
Speaker 2: Cash for nothing but money, yeah, you know. Money.
Speaker 3: In the end, you'd have to say on balance, he
Speaker 3: wasn't going to go to heaven, which is I think
Speaker 3: he acknowledged himself had an interview with Julia Baird.
Speaker 2: Is that right he did?
Speaker 1: I think he said there were there more deserving people
Speaker 1: to go to heaven. And I think there are many
Speaker 1: many people probably around the country who would agree with Roger.
Speaker 3: On that note. Neil, we'll say amen. But your book
Speaker 3: I have read every word The Kingpin and the Crooked Cop.
Speaker 3: The Kingpin, of course is Neddie Smith, but the Crooked
Speaker 3: Cop is the one we've spoken about mostly today because
Speaker 3: we can't cover every story in the book.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of it. It's a big book. It's
Speaker 2: I've got a lot of detail.
Speaker 3: It's got a lot of new material mixed in very
Speaker 3: artfully with established material and written by one of our
Speaker 3: finest investigative journalists and Wordsmith a combination of abilities that
Speaker 3: don't always go together, Neil, but you've you've got both.
Speaker 3: You're you're a fighter and a boxer.
Speaker 1: You're too kind.
Speaker 2: It's a pleasure to talk to you in long may
Speaker 2: you reign.
Speaker 1: Thank you very much, Andrew, Thanks for having.
Speaker 2: Me, Thanks for listening.
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