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Speaker 1: If you saw a couple of cars go pass with

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Speaker 1: no number plates, being driven by furtive looking people wearing

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Speaker 1: black hoodies, sunglasses and possibly high vis vests, you would

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Speaker 1: now know that you witnessed the aftermath of a very cheeky,

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Speaker 1: brazen crime. A clever, cunning, plausible kid, quick with a joke,

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Speaker 1: quick with a smoke, and a good line of patter,

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Speaker 1: and headed from an early age towards a life of crime.

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Speaker 1: I'm Andrew Rule. This is life and crimes. Well. One

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Speaker 1: of the interesting crime stories this week was the brazen

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Speaker 1: theft of forty five brand new unregistered cars or motor

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Speaker 1: vehicles from an open yard, an open storage yard I

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Speaker 1: think you would call it in Salmon Street, Port, Melbourne.

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Speaker 1: Now this happened on Sunday afternoon, about mid afternoon, and

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Speaker 1: sometime between that time and six thirty next morning on

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Speaker 1: the Monday morning, these cars were driven out. Now what

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Speaker 1: we think happened is two chaps rolled up in a

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Speaker 1: vehicle and they were wearing of course high viz vests

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Speaker 1: because when you want to be invisible, you must wear

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Speaker 1: high vis and because they had the orange high viz

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Speaker 1: sleeveless vests on, they were able to wander over to

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Speaker 1: the gate of this big open yard where these cars

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Speaker 1: are stored after being brought off ships, and I think

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Speaker 1: they were able to just cut the chain or otherwise

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Speaker 1: open it fairly easily. And interestingly, there was a big

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Speaker 1: enough gap behind the gate that they opened for cars

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Speaker 1: to come in and out. There were not lockable bollards

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Speaker 1: in place or anything like that, so as soon as

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Speaker 1: they opened those gates, I think probably just opened with

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Speaker 1: bolt cutters. I might be wrong something like that. They

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Speaker 1: were able to go inside and pinch cars. Now, it

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Speaker 1: would appear that when these cars are brought in from

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Speaker 1: the ships they have to be driven off. They obviously

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Speaker 1: have their keys in them, which they must leave in

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Speaker 1: them either in the ignition or on the floor or somewhere,

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Speaker 1: and they have a little bit of fuel, not much.

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Speaker 1: It turns out that some of these cars were found

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Speaker 1: not far away because they had such little fuel in

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Speaker 1: them that they had to abandon them. But most of

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Speaker 1: them disappeared. That is forty five cars, including twenty odd

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Speaker 1: Honda Civic late model Honda Civis brand new, and various

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Speaker 1: types of van and various scoters and so on and

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Speaker 1: so forth. I'm not sure which ones they thought were

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Speaker 1: the most valuable or the most resaleable. But I suspect

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Speaker 1: that if the thieves get away with these cars, they

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Speaker 1: will end up probably shipping them into state, you would imagine,

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Speaker 1: and they're doctoring them up with false identities from other vehicles,

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Speaker 1: maybe wrecked cars or whatever it might be, or maybe

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Speaker 1: they stripped them for parts. They might be all sorts

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Speaker 1: of ways of profiting from this crime if you have

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Speaker 1: so many brand new cars to choose from. It took

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Speaker 1: quite a long while for the thieves to do this

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Speaker 1: because in effect there were about ten people involved, and

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Speaker 1: the police believe that what happened was having got into

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Speaker 1: the car yard this handful of people, they then jumped

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Speaker 1: on their mobile phones and called in their mates and

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Speaker 1: mates of mates to turn up quickly and come along

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Speaker 1: and help move cars. So they'd drive them out through

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Speaker 1: the gate and then somebody else would jump in one

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Speaker 1: and head off, and they scattered all over Melbourne. Now

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Speaker 1: the balloon has gone up on Monday morning, that is

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Speaker 1: Monday morning, October the twenty first, I think it was,

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Speaker 1: And by the middle of that afternoon the police had

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Speaker 1: arrested one forty two year old woman who I think

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Speaker 1: is from Paran, and that woman was arrested at broad Meadows,

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Speaker 1: so I think she's a Pran resident arrested at broad Meadows.

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Speaker 1: And there's relatively clear CCTV footage of a woman that

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Speaker 1: we would presume is the arrested woman at the scene.

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Speaker 1: She's standing outside a vehicle that clearly these people have

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Speaker 1: driven to the car yard. She's wearing big dark sunglasses surprise, surprise,

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Speaker 1: and a black top and some fairly sort of dirty

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Speaker 1: looking tracksuit bottoms. No surprises there. At the time of

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Speaker 1: recording our podcast, it would appear that at least seventeen

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Speaker 1: of these cars have been recovered, so not all of

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Speaker 1: them got where they were going because they didn't have

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Speaker 1: enough fuel or the crooks decided that some of them

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Speaker 1: they didn't want on. Presuming that some of these scooters

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Speaker 1: that were easy to get out of the place may

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Speaker 1: not be as profitable an item on the black market

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Speaker 1: as some of the other vehicles, I think some of

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Speaker 1: the others, like the Hondas and others, were a better

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Speaker 1: proposition for criminals to profit from. In effect, of course,

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Speaker 1: the crooks had a convoy of cars leaving Salmon Street

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Speaker 1: and then heading out into the urbs that would give

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Speaker 1: police a bit of an idea which way they were heading,

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Speaker 1: because they would be able to pick up some other

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Speaker 1: security footage from different businesses along the way, and presumably

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Speaker 1: there are traffic cameras and so forth set up that

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Speaker 1: would give police a bit of an idea of where

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Speaker 1: many of these cars went. Now, they are unregistered, which

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Speaker 1: means they've been driven off without number plates. So the

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Speaker 1: giveaway for anyone who thinks they've seen this is brand

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Speaker 1: new cars, no number plates, and some of them in

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Speaker 1: fact still had the plastic sticky sheeting that they use

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Speaker 1: to cover cars when they are being transported by ship.

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Speaker 1: Some of them still had that stuff on them, so

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Speaker 1: they would stand out a bit. If you're out on

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Speaker 1: a Sunday drive and you saw a couple of cars

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Speaker 1: go past with no number plates, being driven by furtive

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Speaker 1: looking people wearing black hoodies, sunglasses and possibly high vis vests,

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Speaker 1: you would now know that you witnessed the aftermath of

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Speaker 1: a very cheeky, brazen crime. But this is not the

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Speaker 1: first time that such a thing has happened in that area.

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Speaker 1: This reminded veteran reporters of other events, and one that

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Speaker 1: comes to mind is the story recounted to this reporter

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Speaker 1: many years ago by David McMillan. Now, McMillan is someone

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Speaker 1: that our listeners will recall is the man we dubbed mcvillain.

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Speaker 1: Mcvillain is David McMillan, who I think was actually born

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Speaker 1: in London to Australian parents. And some of you will

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Speaker 1: recall that he grew up here in Melbourne and went

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Speaker 1: to Caulfield Grammar with people like Nick Cave and others,

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Speaker 1: and Christopher Scase I think also went there and various

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Speaker 1: other people. And mcvillaan was always a very naughty lad.

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Speaker 1: I think he might have been expelled from Corfield Grammar

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Speaker 1: for being bad. There was always talk that he was

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Speaker 1: a person who would steal credit cards and cash, and

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Speaker 1: that he would buy and sell drugs, et cetera, et cetera.

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Speaker 1: He was always a clever, cunning, plausible kid, quick with

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Speaker 1: a joke, quick with a smoke, and a good line

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Speaker 1: of patter, and headed from an early age towards a

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Speaker 1: life of crime. And David McMillan would go on to

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Speaker 1: become an international drug runner. He would go on to

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Speaker 1: become someone who was locked up in Australia for a

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Speaker 1: lengthy period of time and locked up in what we

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Speaker 1: call the Bangkok Hilton, which is the biggest, baddest jail

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Speaker 1: in Asia probably and he notably escaped from the Bangkok

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Speaker 1: Hilton in Thailand using a very very ingenious method to

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Speaker 1: get over the wall, and probably also using some of

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Speaker 1: his ill gotten gains from drug running to bribe the

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Speaker 1: very bribeable guards who were looking after him in the

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Speaker 1: Bangkok Hilton. And so having reminded ourselves about who David

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Speaker 1: McMillan was, we will go back to his early days

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Speaker 1: in Melbourne. Now when he's in his early twenties, this

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Speaker 1: young fella, he's been kicked out a school, he's picked

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Speaker 1: up the odd job in advertising in cinemas and other places,

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Speaker 1: but he's starting to hang around with crooks. He's running

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Speaker 1: Heroine into the country. He was smart, he was cunning,

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Speaker 1: he was clever, and he was a guy who took

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Speaker 1: advantage of the system as it then was, and the

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Speaker 1: system back in the seventies was open to exploitation and corruption.

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Speaker 1: What he was able to do back then, and what

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Speaker 1: cunning crooks did then, was to equip themselves with false

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Speaker 1: passports that were absolutely genuine to look at and in

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Speaker 1: a sense they were genuine passports, but they were made

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Speaker 1: out to people in the wrong names. They were real passports,

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Speaker 1: but the names and photographs in them were false. And

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Speaker 1: what he'd do is go to the death notices from

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Speaker 1: around the time, say he was born, say he was

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Speaker 1: born in nineteen fifty six. He go to death notices

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Speaker 1: from around that time, and he would find the odd

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Speaker 1: young child that had died, or baby a stillborn birth,

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Speaker 1: or a young child that had died. He would then

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Speaker 1: find the details of that child's birth, often by going

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Speaker 1: to cemeteries and writing down the details of their birth

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Speaker 1: and so forth from the headstones, and that would equip

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Speaker 1: him to go to birth, death and marriages and get

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Speaker 1: himself a birth certificate in that person's name. And in

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Speaker 1: that era, before computerization, the records weren't all linked up together,

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Speaker 1: and so if you got a birth certificate, you know,

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Speaker 1: basically typed up in hand written and all the rest

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Speaker 1: of it from the appropriate government office in Melbourne. I

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Speaker 1: think one was in La Trope Street, it doesn't matter

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Speaker 1: where it was. You could go there and get them

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Speaker 1: and then he would take that and he could set

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Speaker 1: up bank accounts and set up other means of identity,

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Speaker 1: and that would be able to be used or abused

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Speaker 1: manipulated to get a passport in that dead kid's name

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Speaker 1: as if the child had lived and was now an adult.

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Speaker 1: And so there our friend McMillan would be with a

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Speaker 1: passport that said Michael Jones or whatever it might be,

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Speaker 1: and he was able to use that technique to get

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Speaker 1: multiple passports for himself and others, and they would use

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Speaker 1: those passports to travel the world and bring back Heroine.

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Speaker 1: The beautiful thing about the passports scam was that he

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Speaker 1: could fly into highly suspicious destinations in Asia, such as

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Speaker 1: Bangkok and places in Vietnam, perhaps the Middle East, India

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Speaker 1: wherever places were known sources of cheap drugs, he could

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Speaker 1: obtain the drugs. He could then fly out of those

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Speaker 1: places using a different passport and go to somewhere like

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Speaker 1: Sweden or something like that. Then he would fly into

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Speaker 1: London from Sweden. Then, depending which passport he'd used, he

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Speaker 1: would then have established himself as having traveled to Sweden,

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Speaker 1: then to London back to Australia. And so when the

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Speaker 1: Australian authorities looked at whichever passport he produced, there was

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Speaker 1: no sign of that guy having been in the Middle East,

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Speaker 1: and therefore he would not be flagged for a search

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Speaker 1: of his luggage. But of course what he had in

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Speaker 1: his luggage was large amounts of heroin, and that meant

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Speaker 1: that mcvillain was bringing in a heap of stuff. His

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Speaker 1: couriers were bringing in a heap of contraband heroin, selling

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Speaker 1: it for tens of thousands of dollars a week. And

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Speaker 1: he had so much money, so much cash, money that

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Speaker 1: he wouldn't even count at all. He described once to

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Speaker 1: me that he would jam it all on a table

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Speaker 1: with a weight on it. And he worked out that

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Speaker 1: if you measured what he called nine inches, inches were

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Speaker 1: what we used to measure things in the old days,

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Speaker 1: and nine inches is roughly a man's handspan, and that

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Speaker 1: amount of paper money in certain denominations, whichever, say, fifty

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Speaker 1: dollar notes, was one hundred and forty thousand dollars or

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Speaker 1: whatever it was, And so he had a rough idea

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Speaker 1: just by looking at a pile of notes of particular

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Speaker 1: denominations how much money it was. But he didn't bother

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Speaker 1: counting it too much, because it didn't really matter within

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Speaker 1: a few thousand if he was missing some or had

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Speaker 1: more just didn't matter to him. This is the man who,

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Speaker 1: at the age of twenty two, was making his way

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Speaker 1: in the criminal underworld of Melbourne, an underworld he'd never

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Speaker 1: grown up in. He'd grown up in middle class in

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Speaker 1: a suburban eastern suburbs. As I said, he'd gone to

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Speaker 1: court for grammar. His mother was a beautiful, stylish, fashionable

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Speaker 1: woman who happened to live with one of the leading

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Speaker 1: society abortionists of the era. So there was a bit

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Speaker 1: of law breaking going on. But he wasn't a kid

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Speaker 1: who had rubbed shoulders with bank robbers and all the

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Speaker 1: rest of it. But now he started to do that

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Speaker 1: because that was the way he rolled, really and he

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Speaker 1: got mixed up with a really good little armed robber

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Speaker 1: and truck hijacker, a low called Danny McIntosh who was

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Speaker 1: particularly good at those dark arts. And Danny McIntosh and

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Speaker 1: some others have heard that they can pull a massive

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Speaker 1: high in not Port Melbourne, but right next door in

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Speaker 1: South Melbourne. The target is a place called Guthrie Trading.

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Speaker 1: Guthrie Trading in those days in the seventies used to

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Speaker 1: import guns, among other things, and worded leaked out this

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Speaker 1: is the thing about guns, guns, cash and drugs. They

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Speaker 1: attract people. They attract a lot of attention. And the

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Speaker 1: thing about guns is they attract the attention of not

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Speaker 1: just crooks as in criminals. They attract the attention of

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Speaker 1: people who like guns. So you'll get prison guards, you'll

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Speaker 1: get police, you'll get ex soldiers, you'll get hunters, you'll

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Speaker 1: get you know, possibly farmers. Guns are something that a

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Speaker 1: lot of people are quite interested in, not necessarily because

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Speaker 1: they want to rob banks or something, but they just

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Speaker 1: fancy them. And therefore it's wise not to talk about

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Speaker 1: where they are, or where they might be stored, or

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Speaker 1: where they might be imported. But someone somewhere had leaked

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Speaker 1: that Guthrie Trading had a brand new consignment straight off

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Speaker 1: the boat of something like one hundred and eighty brand

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Speaker 1: new pistols. There. This is Colts and it was Barretta's

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Speaker 1: and it was a whole heap of brand new stuff

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Speaker 1: worth good money on the legit market, worth good money,

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Speaker 1: but worth a hell of a lot more on the

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Speaker 1: black market, because people will pay for that sort of stuff.

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Speaker 1: And what happened was Danny McIntosh was running the show,

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Speaker 1: but one of the guys wearing the balaclavas with him

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Speaker 1: we think was probably David McMillan, and I think there

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Speaker 1: was Danny McIntosh plus five others, six altogether. They go

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Speaker 1: into this warehouse, the gun warehouse, with Balaclav's, with bags

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Speaker 1: and with guns of their own. The gunman hold up

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Speaker 1: the gun business or the gun place, the gun warehouse,

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Speaker 1: and they fill all their bags with so many pistols

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Speaker 1: that can hardly carry them. And then they leave wearing

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Speaker 1: their bella clavers, and they I think threw them in

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Speaker 1: the backs of cars and things, and the way they went. Now,

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Speaker 1: the police was so unhappy about this, so distraught that

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Speaker 1: this had happened, that they sent out word to the underworld.

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Speaker 1: In those days, the police were inclined to rub shoulders

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Speaker 1: with certain members of the underworld. The consorting squad would

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Speaker 1: consort with known criminals in order to find out information

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Speaker 1: and possibly even pass on a bit. And the word

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Speaker 1: went out from the police who couldn't find these guns,

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Speaker 1: they raided places, couldn't find them, and said, we want

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Speaker 1: you blogs to make sure that those guns don't end

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Speaker 1: up on the street in the hands of idiots where

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Speaker 1: they will endanger the public, or be used for random crimes,

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Speaker 1: or endanger police. So basicly, the coppers put the crooks

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Speaker 1: on notice not to be selling those guns in pubs

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Speaker 1: to lunatics, which was very nice of them really, and

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Speaker 1: indeed they were fairly careful. According to David McMillan, who

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Speaker 1: did not want to incriminate himself, but he did say this,

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Speaker 1: he said, they were broken up into seven different cases

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Speaker 1: of guns. I think there might have been a total

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Speaker 1: of seven people involved in this, and each case they

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Speaker 1: stripped them down, pull them apart, coated them in oil

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Speaker 1: so that they wouldn't rust or otherwise be harmed by

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Speaker 1: the elements or anything else or moisture, and then each

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Speaker 1: person stole away into the night with their cache of

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Speaker 1: stolen guns. And what happened to all of them we

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Speaker 1: won't know. Probably most of them are still out there somewhere.

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Speaker 1: It's possible that some of them ended up back in

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Speaker 1: police hands and that some didn't. But the bit we

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Speaker 1: do know is that if we trust David McMillan, and

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Speaker 1: I don't know why you would, but anyway, this is

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Speaker 1: his story. McMillan, who was a very flashy, pretentious character,

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Speaker 1: as he later admitted, he had a beautiful leather suit

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Speaker 1: mate and in this leather suit. He had leather pockets

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Speaker 1: inserted in this sort of a long top coat. So

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Speaker 1: he was like some sort of cross between Batman and

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Speaker 1: Wyatt Earth or something, or bat Masterson maybe, And he

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Speaker 1: had these long leather lined pockets and he would use

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Speaker 1: those instead of holsters. And what he had were two

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Speaker 1: matched pistols, twenty two pistols with silences on. Now, the

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Speaker 1: combination of a target pistol with a silencer ended up

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Speaker 1: about eighteen inches long, which is in the modern money

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Speaker 1: is around the forty centim say, are a bit more,

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Speaker 1: and that made them quite a clumsy item. And he

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Speaker 1: had one on each side of his body in his coat,

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Speaker 1: and for a little while there he said he used

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Speaker 1: to wear this thing around. But he also on one

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Speaker 1: occasion he wanted to recover some money from a fellow

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Speaker 1: called Jacob, who owed some cash to David's girlfriend, Clelia Vigano.

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Speaker 1: Clelia Vigeno was the daughter of a very famous and

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Speaker 1: much loved Melbourne restauranteur, and Clelia ended up dying in

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Speaker 1: a fire in fairly women's prison, which is very tragic.

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Speaker 1: But this is back before the tragedy of the fire,

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Speaker 1: and David is trying to impress Clelia with his sort

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Speaker 1: of criminal no how and all the rest of it,

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Speaker 1: and as well as he's two silence pistols in his

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Speaker 1: coat pockets. He carried a big heavy handgun, something like

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Speaker 1: a three point fifty seven I think it was, and

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Speaker 1: in it it had the heaviest load of copper jacketed bullets.

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Speaker 1: These are the ones that will go through anything except

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Speaker 1: an engine block. They're made for stopping cars when police

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Speaker 1: shoot at cars whatever. There he is in Clelia's parents

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Speaker 1: restaurant building. It's a big building. It's got multiple floors.

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Speaker 1: He is in the floor above where the restaurant area

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Speaker 1: is and the pub area the bar area right. And

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Speaker 1: it is about ten past ten in the evening, which

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Speaker 1: was very lucky because if it had been ten minutes

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Speaker 1: to ten, the bar below would have had quite a

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Speaker 1: lot of people in it. It was ten after ten,

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Speaker 1: which meant theoretically it should have been clear of people.

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Speaker 1: And that matters because while he's mucking around in the

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Speaker 1: bathroom upstairs, as can happen, he accidentally triggers the trigger

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Speaker 1: on the three point fifty seven, the big heavy handgun

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Speaker 1: and the copper jacketed bullet ultra powerful heavy load et cetera.

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Speaker 1: Goes straight through the floor. It goes off like a cannon.

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Speaker 1: It goes straight through the floor, that wooden floorboards into

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Speaker 1: the bar below. Now, as he pointed out later when

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Speaker 1: he told this, had it been earlier, it probably would

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Speaker 1: have killed somebody. But no one was there and so

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Speaker 1: it didn't hurt anybody. But the rest of the family

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Speaker 1: got to know all about it. And when he came

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Speaker 1: down for breakfast next morning, Cloudlya's father, mister Vigano, said,

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Speaker 1: no more guns. If there's any more guns, well you

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Speaker 1: won't be coming back here. And he was right, and

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Speaker 1: for once in his miserable life, David McMillan took the

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Speaker 1: hint and he gave up walking around carrying guns. As

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Speaker 1: he set himself, it wasn't really his go. Had he

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Speaker 1: been even smarter, he would have given up running drugs,

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Speaker 1: but he didn't, and in the end he would end

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Speaker 1: up arrested and in jail in several countries around the world,

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Speaker 1: and now in his late sixties, approaching seventy. In fact,

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Speaker 1: it's hard to know whether he's inside or out. But

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Speaker 1: he will die broke, and he will die with a

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Speaker 1: very long criminal record. And that is the story of

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Speaker 1: another heist south of the Yarra in Melbourne Town. Thanks

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Speaker 1: for listening. Life and Crimes is a Sunday Herald Sun

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Speaker 1: production for True Crime Australia. Our producer is Johnty Burton.

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Speaker 1: For my columns, features and more, go to harold'sun dot

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Speaker 1: com dot au forward slash Andrew rule one word. For

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00:24:02,440 --> 00:24:08,000
Speaker 1: advertising inquiries, go to news podcasts sold at news dot

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Speaker 1: com dot au. That is all one word news podcast's sold.

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Speaker 1: And if you want further information about this episode, links

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Speaker 1: are in the description