WEBVTT - The art of the heist 0:00:01.480 --> 0:00:03.480 If you saw a couple of cars go pass with 0:00:03.520 --> 0:00:07.160 no number plates, being driven by furtive looking people wearing 0:00:07.440 --> 0:00:11.280 black hoodies, sunglasses and possibly high vis vests, you would 0:00:11.320 --> 0:00:15.880 now know that you witnessed the aftermath of a very cheeky, 0:00:16.280 --> 0:00:22.520 brazen crime. A clever, cunning, plausible kid, quick with a joke, 0:00:22.680 --> 0:00:25.760 quick with a smoke, and a good line of patter, 0:00:26.160 --> 0:00:30.440 and headed from an early age towards a life of crime. 0:00:30.680 --> 0:00:34.600 I'm Andrew Rule. This is life and crimes. Well. One 0:00:34.640 --> 0:00:39.120 of the interesting crime stories this week was the brazen 0:00:39.440 --> 0:00:44.680 theft of forty five brand new unregistered cars or motor 0:00:44.760 --> 0:00:50.600 vehicles from an open yard, an open storage yard I 0:00:50.640 --> 0:00:53.920 think you would call it in Salmon Street, Port, Melbourne. 0:00:54.000 --> 0:00:57.920 Now this happened on Sunday afternoon, about mid afternoon, and 0:00:58.080 --> 0:01:02.200 sometime between that time and six thirty next morning on 0:01:02.240 --> 0:01:06.880 the Monday morning, these cars were driven out. Now what 0:01:06.959 --> 0:01:10.720 we think happened is two chaps rolled up in a 0:01:10.800 --> 0:01:14.920 vehicle and they were wearing of course high viz vests 0:01:15.000 --> 0:01:17.800 because when you want to be invisible, you must wear 0:01:17.880 --> 0:01:21.240 high vis and because they had the orange high viz 0:01:21.600 --> 0:01:25.000 sleeveless vests on, they were able to wander over to 0:01:25.160 --> 0:01:28.800 the gate of this big open yard where these cars 0:01:28.800 --> 0:01:33.640 are stored after being brought off ships, and I think 0:01:33.680 --> 0:01:36.520 they were able to just cut the chain or otherwise 0:01:36.520 --> 0:01:41.280 open it fairly easily. And interestingly, there was a big 0:01:41.360 --> 0:01:45.000 enough gap behind the gate that they opened for cars 0:01:45.040 --> 0:01:48.040 to come in and out. There were not lockable bollards 0:01:48.040 --> 0:01:51.000 in place or anything like that, so as soon as 0:01:51.000 --> 0:01:55.160 they opened those gates, I think probably just opened with 0:01:55.240 --> 0:01:58.920 bolt cutters. I might be wrong something like that. They 0:01:59.200 --> 0:02:02.520 were able to go inside and pinch cars. Now, it 0:02:02.560 --> 0:02:04.720 would appear that when these cars are brought in from 0:02:04.760 --> 0:02:07.840 the ships they have to be driven off. They obviously 0:02:07.920 --> 0:02:10.880 have their keys in them, which they must leave in 0:02:10.919 --> 0:02:13.840 them either in the ignition or on the floor or somewhere, 0:02:14.160 --> 0:02:17.360 and they have a little bit of fuel, not much. 0:02:18.360 --> 0:02:21.480 It turns out that some of these cars were found 0:02:21.639 --> 0:02:25.360 not far away because they had such little fuel in 0:02:25.400 --> 0:02:28.880 them that they had to abandon them. But most of 0:02:28.919 --> 0:02:34.239 them disappeared. That is forty five cars, including twenty odd 0:02:34.400 --> 0:02:39.240 Honda Civic late model Honda Civis brand new, and various 0:02:39.520 --> 0:02:43.600 types of van and various scoters and so on and 0:02:43.600 --> 0:02:46.440 so forth. I'm not sure which ones they thought were 0:02:46.440 --> 0:02:52.040 the most valuable or the most resaleable. But I suspect 0:02:52.520 --> 0:02:59.079 that if the thieves get away with these cars, they 0:02:59.160 --> 0:03:04.880 will end up probably shipping them into state, you would imagine, 0:03:05.400 --> 0:03:10.160 and they're doctoring them up with false identities from other vehicles, 0:03:10.680 --> 0:03:14.200 maybe wrecked cars or whatever it might be, or maybe 0:03:14.200 --> 0:03:17.040 they stripped them for parts. They might be all sorts 0:03:17.080 --> 0:03:21.760 of ways of profiting from this crime if you have 0:03:22.440 --> 0:03:26.560 so many brand new cars to choose from. It took 0:03:26.880 --> 0:03:29.280 quite a long while for the thieves to do this 0:03:29.440 --> 0:03:34.480 because in effect there were about ten people involved, and 0:03:34.520 --> 0:03:37.920 the police believe that what happened was having got into 0:03:37.920 --> 0:03:41.440 the car yard this handful of people, they then jumped 0:03:41.440 --> 0:03:44.640 on their mobile phones and called in their mates and 0:03:44.720 --> 0:03:48.040 mates of mates to turn up quickly and come along 0:03:48.240 --> 0:03:50.960 and help move cars. So they'd drive them out through 0:03:50.960 --> 0:03:53.880 the gate and then somebody else would jump in one 0:03:53.920 --> 0:03:57.600 and head off, and they scattered all over Melbourne. Now 0:03:57.680 --> 0:04:00.720 the balloon has gone up on Monday morning, that is 0:04:00.800 --> 0:04:03.840 Monday morning, October the twenty first, I think it was, 0:04:04.920 --> 0:04:08.160 And by the middle of that afternoon the police had 0:04:08.240 --> 0:04:12.080 arrested one forty two year old woman who I think 0:04:12.200 --> 0:04:17.560 is from Paran, and that woman was arrested at broad Meadows, 0:04:17.839 --> 0:04:21.800 so I think she's a Pran resident arrested at broad Meadows. 0:04:22.560 --> 0:04:28.920 And there's relatively clear CCTV footage of a woman that 0:04:28.960 --> 0:04:32.480 we would presume is the arrested woman at the scene. 0:04:32.720 --> 0:04:36.120 She's standing outside a vehicle that clearly these people have 0:04:36.279 --> 0:04:41.120 driven to the car yard. She's wearing big dark sunglasses surprise, surprise, 0:04:41.560 --> 0:04:45.200 and a black top and some fairly sort of dirty 0:04:45.240 --> 0:04:50.800 looking tracksuit bottoms. No surprises there. At the time of 0:04:51.000 --> 0:04:55.000 recording our podcast, it would appear that at least seventeen 0:04:55.120 --> 0:04:57.960 of these cars have been recovered, so not all of 0:04:58.000 --> 0:05:01.560 them got where they were going because they didn't have 0:05:01.680 --> 0:05:05.560 enough fuel or the crooks decided that some of them 0:05:05.720 --> 0:05:08.839 they didn't want on. Presuming that some of these scooters 0:05:09.760 --> 0:05:12.599 that were easy to get out of the place may 0:05:12.680 --> 0:05:17.160 not be as profitable an item on the black market 0:05:17.240 --> 0:05:19.159 as some of the other vehicles, I think some of 0:05:19.160 --> 0:05:23.559 the others, like the Hondas and others, were a better 0:05:23.600 --> 0:05:31.400 proposition for criminals to profit from. In effect, of course, 0:05:31.760 --> 0:05:36.040 the crooks had a convoy of cars leaving Salmon Street 0:05:36.080 --> 0:05:38.840 and then heading out into the urbs that would give 0:05:38.960 --> 0:05:41.360 police a bit of an idea which way they were heading, 0:05:41.640 --> 0:05:44.720 because they would be able to pick up some other 0:05:45.360 --> 0:05:50.520 security footage from different businesses along the way, and presumably 0:05:50.680 --> 0:05:53.400 there are traffic cameras and so forth set up that 0:05:53.800 --> 0:05:55.920 would give police a bit of an idea of where 0:05:56.560 --> 0:06:01.360 many of these cars went. Now, they are unregistered, which 0:06:01.480 --> 0:06:06.120 means they've been driven off without number plates. So the 0:06:06.160 --> 0:06:10.440 giveaway for anyone who thinks they've seen this is brand 0:06:10.440 --> 0:06:13.840 new cars, no number plates, and some of them in 0:06:13.880 --> 0:06:20.080 fact still had the plastic sticky sheeting that they use 0:06:21.000 --> 0:06:24.120 to cover cars when they are being transported by ship. 0:06:24.560 --> 0:06:26.680 Some of them still had that stuff on them, so 0:06:26.760 --> 0:06:28.800 they would stand out a bit. If you're out on 0:06:28.800 --> 0:06:31.520 a Sunday drive and you saw a couple of cars 0:06:31.520 --> 0:06:34.920 go past with no number plates, being driven by furtive 0:06:35.040 --> 0:06:39.800 looking people wearing black hoodies, sunglasses and possibly high vis vests, 0:06:40.839 --> 0:06:45.000 you would now know that you witnessed the aftermath of 0:06:45.080 --> 0:06:50.760 a very cheeky, brazen crime. But this is not the 0:06:50.800 --> 0:06:53.520 first time that such a thing has happened in that area. 0:06:54.279 --> 0:06:59.280 This reminded veteran reporters of other events, and one that 0:06:59.320 --> 0:07:04.640 comes to mind is the story recounted to this reporter 0:07:04.760 --> 0:07:08.919 many years ago by David McMillan. Now, McMillan is someone 0:07:09.520 --> 0:07:15.040 that our listeners will recall is the man we dubbed mcvillain. 0:07:15.680 --> 0:07:19.400 Mcvillain is David McMillan, who I think was actually born 0:07:19.440 --> 0:07:25.800 in London to Australian parents. And some of you will 0:07:25.800 --> 0:07:29.760 recall that he grew up here in Melbourne and went 0:07:29.800 --> 0:07:33.080 to Caulfield Grammar with people like Nick Cave and others, 0:07:34.080 --> 0:07:37.160 and Christopher Scase I think also went there and various 0:07:37.200 --> 0:07:41.840 other people. And mcvillaan was always a very naughty lad. 0:07:42.200 --> 0:07:45.360 I think he might have been expelled from Corfield Grammar 0:07:45.400 --> 0:07:48.600 for being bad. There was always talk that he was 0:07:49.760 --> 0:07:53.440 a person who would steal credit cards and cash, and 0:07:53.560 --> 0:07:57.000 that he would buy and sell drugs, et cetera, et cetera. 0:07:57.080 --> 0:08:02.040 He was always a clever, cunning, plausible kid, quick with 0:08:02.080 --> 0:08:05.320 a joke, quick with a smoke, and a good line 0:08:05.320 --> 0:08:09.520 of patter, and headed from an early age towards a 0:08:09.600 --> 0:08:13.120 life of crime. And David McMillan would go on to 0:08:13.120 --> 0:08:16.040 become an international drug runner. He would go on to 0:08:16.120 --> 0:08:19.760 become someone who was locked up in Australia for a 0:08:19.840 --> 0:08:23.200 lengthy period of time and locked up in what we 0:08:23.280 --> 0:08:27.960 call the Bangkok Hilton, which is the biggest, baddest jail 0:08:28.160 --> 0:08:34.320 in Asia probably and he notably escaped from the Bangkok 0:08:34.440 --> 0:08:40.200 Hilton in Thailand using a very very ingenious method to 0:08:40.280 --> 0:08:43.800 get over the wall, and probably also using some of 0:08:43.840 --> 0:08:47.440 his ill gotten gains from drug running to bribe the 0:08:47.840 --> 0:08:52.360 very bribeable guards who were looking after him in the 0:08:52.400 --> 0:08:57.439 Bangkok Hilton. And so having reminded ourselves about who David 0:08:57.520 --> 0:09:01.920 McMillan was, we will go back to his early days 0:09:01.960 --> 0:09:06.120 in Melbourne. Now when he's in his early twenties, this 0:09:06.320 --> 0:09:09.679 young fella, he's been kicked out a school, he's picked 0:09:09.720 --> 0:09:13.720 up the odd job in advertising in cinemas and other places, 0:09:14.120 --> 0:09:17.720 but he's starting to hang around with crooks. He's running 0:09:17.960 --> 0:09:21.640 Heroine into the country. He was smart, he was cunning, 0:09:21.679 --> 0:09:24.680 he was clever, and he was a guy who took 0:09:24.720 --> 0:09:28.560 advantage of the system as it then was, and the 0:09:28.600 --> 0:09:34.440 system back in the seventies was open to exploitation and corruption. 0:09:35.040 --> 0:09:37.319 What he was able to do back then, and what 0:09:37.400 --> 0:09:42.040 cunning crooks did then, was to equip themselves with false 0:09:42.080 --> 0:09:47.480 passports that were absolutely genuine to look at and in 0:09:47.520 --> 0:09:50.280 a sense they were genuine passports, but they were made 0:09:50.280 --> 0:09:54.120 out to people in the wrong names. They were real passports, 0:09:54.679 --> 0:09:58.520 but the names and photographs in them were false. And 0:09:58.559 --> 0:10:02.720 what he'd do is go to the death notices from 0:10:02.920 --> 0:10:05.840 around the time, say he was born, say he was 0:10:05.880 --> 0:10:09.480 born in nineteen fifty six. He go to death notices 0:10:09.640 --> 0:10:12.960 from around that time, and he would find the odd 0:10:13.360 --> 0:10:16.160 young child that had died, or baby a stillborn birth, 0:10:16.760 --> 0:10:19.600 or a young child that had died. He would then 0:10:19.760 --> 0:10:24.840 find the details of that child's birth, often by going 0:10:24.880 --> 0:10:29.840 to cemeteries and writing down the details of their birth 0:10:29.880 --> 0:10:33.200 and so forth from the headstones, and that would equip 0:10:33.280 --> 0:10:36.560 him to go to birth, death and marriages and get 0:10:36.640 --> 0:10:41.280 himself a birth certificate in that person's name. And in 0:10:41.360 --> 0:10:47.840 that era, before computerization, the records weren't all linked up together, 0:10:48.160 --> 0:10:51.520 and so if you got a birth certificate, you know, 0:10:51.760 --> 0:10:54.120 basically typed up in hand written and all the rest 0:10:54.160 --> 0:10:58.240 of it from the appropriate government office in Melbourne. I 0:10:58.280 --> 0:11:00.600 think one was in La Trope Street, it doesn't matter 0:11:00.640 --> 0:11:02.400 where it was. You could go there and get them 0:11:02.679 --> 0:11:06.600 and then he would take that and he could set 0:11:06.720 --> 0:11:10.439 up bank accounts and set up other means of identity, 0:11:11.000 --> 0:11:15.160 and that would be able to be used or abused 0:11:16.480 --> 0:11:20.760 manipulated to get a passport in that dead kid's name 0:11:21.360 --> 0:11:25.400 as if the child had lived and was now an adult. 0:11:26.240 --> 0:11:31.360 And so there our friend McMillan would be with a 0:11:31.400 --> 0:11:34.800 passport that said Michael Jones or whatever it might be, 0:11:35.440 --> 0:11:38.680 and he was able to use that technique to get 0:11:38.800 --> 0:11:44.040 multiple passports for himself and others, and they would use 0:11:44.040 --> 0:11:48.240 those passports to travel the world and bring back Heroine. 0:11:48.760 --> 0:11:52.080 The beautiful thing about the passports scam was that he 0:11:52.120 --> 0:11:57.640 could fly into highly suspicious destinations in Asia, such as 0:11:57.760 --> 0:12:03.280 Bangkok and places in Vietnam, perhaps the Middle East, India 0:12:03.320 --> 0:12:07.760 wherever places were known sources of cheap drugs, he could 0:12:07.800 --> 0:12:11.640 obtain the drugs. He could then fly out of those 0:12:11.679 --> 0:12:15.640 places using a different passport and go to somewhere like 0:12:15.880 --> 0:12:18.840 Sweden or something like that. Then he would fly into 0:12:19.000 --> 0:12:24.640 London from Sweden. Then, depending which passport he'd used, he 0:12:24.679 --> 0:12:30.480 would then have established himself as having traveled to Sweden, 0:12:30.720 --> 0:12:32.960 then to London back to Australia. And so when the 0:12:33.000 --> 0:12:37.440 Australian authorities looked at whichever passport he produced, there was 0:12:37.480 --> 0:12:40.880 no sign of that guy having been in the Middle East, 0:12:41.200 --> 0:12:44.520 and therefore he would not be flagged for a search 0:12:44.880 --> 0:12:48.200 of his luggage. But of course what he had in 0:12:48.240 --> 0:12:51.640 his luggage was large amounts of heroin, and that meant 0:12:51.679 --> 0:12:55.680 that mcvillain was bringing in a heap of stuff. His 0:12:55.840 --> 0:13:00.520 couriers were bringing in a heap of contraband heroin, selling 0:13:00.559 --> 0:13:05.800 it for tens of thousands of dollars a week. And 0:13:05.920 --> 0:13:09.400 he had so much money, so much cash, money that 0:13:10.440 --> 0:13:14.720 he wouldn't even count at all. He described once to 0:13:14.760 --> 0:13:18.079 me that he would jam it all on a table 0:13:18.600 --> 0:13:20.800 with a weight on it. And he worked out that 0:13:20.840 --> 0:13:25.040 if you measured what he called nine inches, inches were 0:13:25.040 --> 0:13:26.800 what we used to measure things in the old days, 0:13:26.880 --> 0:13:31.920 and nine inches is roughly a man's handspan, and that 0:13:32.840 --> 0:13:37.880 amount of paper money in certain denominations, whichever, say, fifty 0:13:37.880 --> 0:13:40.920 dollar notes, was one hundred and forty thousand dollars or 0:13:41.080 --> 0:13:43.320 whatever it was, And so he had a rough idea 0:13:43.600 --> 0:13:47.679 just by looking at a pile of notes of particular 0:13:47.720 --> 0:13:50.959 denominations how much money it was. But he didn't bother 0:13:51.200 --> 0:13:53.800 counting it too much, because it didn't really matter within 0:13:53.880 --> 0:13:57.240 a few thousand if he was missing some or had 0:13:57.280 --> 0:14:00.160 more just didn't matter to him. This is the man who, 0:14:00.200 --> 0:14:03.959 at the age of twenty two, was making his way 0:14:04.360 --> 0:14:07.880 in the criminal underworld of Melbourne, an underworld he'd never 0:14:07.960 --> 0:14:11.880 grown up in. He'd grown up in middle class in 0:14:11.960 --> 0:14:15.760 a suburban eastern suburbs. As I said, he'd gone to 0:14:16.600 --> 0:14:21.440 court for grammar. His mother was a beautiful, stylish, fashionable 0:14:21.480 --> 0:14:24.240 woman who happened to live with one of the leading 0:14:24.680 --> 0:14:27.960 society abortionists of the era. So there was a bit 0:14:28.000 --> 0:14:30.720 of law breaking going on. But he wasn't a kid 0:14:30.760 --> 0:14:33.480 who had rubbed shoulders with bank robbers and all the 0:14:33.560 --> 0:14:36.560 rest of it. But now he started to do that 0:14:36.880 --> 0:14:41.840 because that was the way he rolled, really and he 0:14:41.880 --> 0:14:45.440 got mixed up with a really good little armed robber 0:14:45.680 --> 0:14:48.880 and truck hijacker, a low called Danny McIntosh who was 0:14:49.240 --> 0:14:54.520 particularly good at those dark arts. And Danny McIntosh and 0:14:55.160 --> 0:14:59.680 some others have heard that they can pull a massive 0:14:59.760 --> 0:15:04.160 high in not Port Melbourne, but right next door in 0:15:04.280 --> 0:15:09.480 South Melbourne. The target is a place called Guthrie Trading. 0:15:09.720 --> 0:15:13.080 Guthrie Trading in those days in the seventies used to 0:15:13.120 --> 0:15:17.880 import guns, among other things, and worded leaked out this 0:15:17.920 --> 0:15:21.680 is the thing about guns, guns, cash and drugs. They 0:15:21.720 --> 0:15:25.520 attract people. They attract a lot of attention. And the 0:15:25.560 --> 0:15:28.480 thing about guns is they attract the attention of not 0:15:28.600 --> 0:15:33.120 just crooks as in criminals. They attract the attention of 0:15:33.280 --> 0:15:37.640 people who like guns. So you'll get prison guards, you'll 0:15:37.680 --> 0:15:41.160 get police, you'll get ex soldiers, you'll get hunters, you'll 0:15:41.160 --> 0:15:45.360 get you know, possibly farmers. Guns are something that a 0:15:45.400 --> 0:15:48.720 lot of people are quite interested in, not necessarily because 0:15:48.720 --> 0:15:51.240 they want to rob banks or something, but they just 0:15:51.320 --> 0:15:55.960 fancy them. And therefore it's wise not to talk about 0:15:56.320 --> 0:15:58.360 where they are, or where they might be stored, or 0:15:58.360 --> 0:16:02.280 where they might be imported. But someone somewhere had leaked 0:16:02.720 --> 0:16:06.640 that Guthrie Trading had a brand new consignment straight off 0:16:06.640 --> 0:16:10.520 the boat of something like one hundred and eighty brand 0:16:10.520 --> 0:16:14.480 new pistols. There. This is Colts and it was Barretta's 0:16:14.480 --> 0:16:17.520 and it was a whole heap of brand new stuff 0:16:18.480 --> 0:16:23.240 worth good money on the legit market, worth good money, 0:16:23.600 --> 0:16:25.320 but worth a hell of a lot more on the 0:16:25.360 --> 0:16:28.680 black market, because people will pay for that sort of stuff. 0:16:29.840 --> 0:16:33.480 And what happened was Danny McIntosh was running the show, 0:16:33.560 --> 0:16:36.880 but one of the guys wearing the balaclavas with him 0:16:37.600 --> 0:16:42.720 we think was probably David McMillan, and I think there 0:16:42.760 --> 0:16:47.560 was Danny McIntosh plus five others, six altogether. They go 0:16:47.720 --> 0:16:53.000 into this warehouse, the gun warehouse, with Balaclav's, with bags 0:16:53.560 --> 0:16:56.200 and with guns of their own. The gunman hold up 0:16:56.280 --> 0:16:59.560 the gun business or the gun place, the gun warehouse, 0:17:00.120 --> 0:17:03.320 and they fill all their bags with so many pistols 0:17:03.440 --> 0:17:06.879 that can hardly carry them. And then they leave wearing 0:17:06.920 --> 0:17:10.080 their bella clavers, and they I think threw them in 0:17:10.080 --> 0:17:12.919 the backs of cars and things, and the way they went. Now, 0:17:13.160 --> 0:17:16.760 the police was so unhappy about this, so distraught that 0:17:17.520 --> 0:17:21.480 this had happened, that they sent out word to the underworld. 0:17:22.000 --> 0:17:25.440 In those days, the police were inclined to rub shoulders 0:17:25.480 --> 0:17:29.120 with certain members of the underworld. The consorting squad would 0:17:29.359 --> 0:17:33.080 consort with known criminals in order to find out information 0:17:33.240 --> 0:17:36.440 and possibly even pass on a bit. And the word 0:17:36.520 --> 0:17:39.760 went out from the police who couldn't find these guns, 0:17:39.920 --> 0:17:45.359 they raided places, couldn't find them, and said, we want 0:17:45.440 --> 0:17:48.280 you blogs to make sure that those guns don't end 0:17:48.359 --> 0:17:50.840 up on the street in the hands of idiots where 0:17:50.920 --> 0:17:57.040 they will endanger the public, or be used for random crimes, 0:17:57.840 --> 0:18:02.320 or endanger police. So basicly, the coppers put the crooks 0:18:02.320 --> 0:18:06.479 on notice not to be selling those guns in pubs 0:18:06.480 --> 0:18:09.919 to lunatics, which was very nice of them really, and 0:18:10.240 --> 0:18:15.520 indeed they were fairly careful. According to David McMillan, who 0:18:15.560 --> 0:18:18.360 did not want to incriminate himself, but he did say this, 0:18:18.840 --> 0:18:22.160 he said, they were broken up into seven different cases 0:18:22.200 --> 0:18:24.440 of guns. I think there might have been a total 0:18:24.440 --> 0:18:29.240 of seven people involved in this, and each case they 0:18:29.720 --> 0:18:33.000 stripped them down, pull them apart, coated them in oil 0:18:33.359 --> 0:18:37.760 so that they wouldn't rust or otherwise be harmed by 0:18:37.760 --> 0:18:41.440 the elements or anything else or moisture, and then each 0:18:41.480 --> 0:18:45.879 person stole away into the night with their cache of 0:18:46.000 --> 0:18:50.920 stolen guns. And what happened to all of them we 0:18:50.960 --> 0:18:53.800 won't know. Probably most of them are still out there somewhere. 0:18:54.359 --> 0:18:57.199 It's possible that some of them ended up back in 0:18:57.200 --> 0:19:02.359 police hands and that some didn't. But the bit we 0:19:02.359 --> 0:19:05.720 do know is that if we trust David McMillan, and 0:19:05.800 --> 0:19:08.960 I don't know why you would, but anyway, this is 0:19:09.000 --> 0:19:13.879 his story. McMillan, who was a very flashy, pretentious character, 0:19:14.000 --> 0:19:17.160 as he later admitted, he had a beautiful leather suit 0:19:17.320 --> 0:19:21.680 mate and in this leather suit. He had leather pockets 0:19:21.680 --> 0:19:26.560 inserted in this sort of a long top coat. So 0:19:26.720 --> 0:19:30.520 he was like some sort of cross between Batman and 0:19:30.760 --> 0:19:34.919 Wyatt Earth or something, or bat Masterson maybe, And he 0:19:34.960 --> 0:19:38.160 had these long leather lined pockets and he would use 0:19:38.200 --> 0:19:40.680 those instead of holsters. And what he had were two 0:19:41.119 --> 0:19:47.680 matched pistols, twenty two pistols with silences on. Now, the 0:19:47.720 --> 0:19:52.600 combination of a target pistol with a silencer ended up 0:19:52.640 --> 0:19:56.879 about eighteen inches long, which is in the modern money 0:19:57.359 --> 0:20:01.000 is around the forty centim say, are a bit more, 0:20:01.600 --> 0:20:04.040 and that made them quite a clumsy item. And he 0:20:04.080 --> 0:20:06.440 had one on each side of his body in his coat, 0:20:07.520 --> 0:20:09.600 and for a little while there he said he used 0:20:09.600 --> 0:20:13.520 to wear this thing around. But he also on one 0:20:13.560 --> 0:20:17.159 occasion he wanted to recover some money from a fellow 0:20:17.200 --> 0:20:24.200 called Jacob, who owed some cash to David's girlfriend, Clelia Vigano. 0:20:24.480 --> 0:20:27.879 Clelia Vigeno was the daughter of a very famous and 0:20:28.000 --> 0:20:32.919 much loved Melbourne restauranteur, and Clelia ended up dying in 0:20:32.960 --> 0:20:36.880 a fire in fairly women's prison, which is very tragic. 0:20:37.680 --> 0:20:41.080 But this is back before the tragedy of the fire, 0:20:41.400 --> 0:20:45.399 and David is trying to impress Clelia with his sort 0:20:45.400 --> 0:20:48.160 of criminal no how and all the rest of it, 0:20:49.080 --> 0:20:52.919 and as well as he's two silence pistols in his 0:20:53.000 --> 0:20:58.080 coat pockets. He carried a big heavy handgun, something like 0:20:58.080 --> 0:21:00.880 a three point fifty seven I think it was, and 0:21:01.080 --> 0:21:06.840 in it it had the heaviest load of copper jacketed bullets. 0:21:07.160 --> 0:21:10.639 These are the ones that will go through anything except 0:21:10.760 --> 0:21:15.680 an engine block. They're made for stopping cars when police 0:21:15.680 --> 0:21:19.440 shoot at cars whatever. There he is in Clelia's parents 0:21:19.840 --> 0:21:24.600 restaurant building. It's a big building. It's got multiple floors. 0:21:24.720 --> 0:21:29.200 He is in the floor above where the restaurant area 0:21:29.400 --> 0:21:33.280 is and the pub area the bar area right. And 0:21:34.680 --> 0:21:37.640 it is about ten past ten in the evening, which 0:21:37.720 --> 0:21:41.240 was very lucky because if it had been ten minutes 0:21:41.280 --> 0:21:44.040 to ten, the bar below would have had quite a 0:21:44.080 --> 0:21:46.600 lot of people in it. It was ten after ten, 0:21:46.640 --> 0:21:50.639 which meant theoretically it should have been clear of people. 0:21:51.680 --> 0:21:55.560 And that matters because while he's mucking around in the 0:21:55.600 --> 0:22:04.359 bathroom upstairs, as can happen, he accidentally triggers the trigger 0:22:04.840 --> 0:22:07.120 on the three point fifty seven, the big heavy handgun 0:22:07.640 --> 0:22:13.960 and the copper jacketed bullet ultra powerful heavy load et cetera. 0:22:14.440 --> 0:22:16.919 Goes straight through the floor. It goes off like a cannon. 0:22:17.240 --> 0:22:20.640 It goes straight through the floor, that wooden floorboards into 0:22:20.680 --> 0:22:26.000 the bar below. Now, as he pointed out later when 0:22:26.000 --> 0:22:28.680 he told this, had it been earlier, it probably would 0:22:28.680 --> 0:22:32.160 have killed somebody. But no one was there and so 0:22:33.200 --> 0:22:36.359 it didn't hurt anybody. But the rest of the family 0:22:36.400 --> 0:22:38.560 got to know all about it. And when he came 0:22:38.600 --> 0:22:44.160 down for breakfast next morning, Cloudlya's father, mister Vigano, said, 0:22:44.320 --> 0:22:48.520 no more guns. If there's any more guns, well you 0:22:48.600 --> 0:22:53.320 won't be coming back here. And he was right, and 0:22:53.600 --> 0:22:57.320 for once in his miserable life, David McMillan took the 0:22:57.400 --> 0:23:01.000 hint and he gave up walking around carrying guns. As 0:23:01.000 --> 0:23:04.480 he set himself, it wasn't really his go. Had he 0:23:04.560 --> 0:23:08.640 been even smarter, he would have given up running drugs, 0:23:08.840 --> 0:23:12.399 but he didn't, and in the end he would end 0:23:12.440 --> 0:23:18.040 up arrested and in jail in several countries around the world, 0:23:18.520 --> 0:23:22.840 and now in his late sixties, approaching seventy. In fact, 0:23:23.960 --> 0:23:28.000 it's hard to know whether he's inside or out. But 0:23:28.119 --> 0:23:31.199 he will die broke, and he will die with a 0:23:31.280 --> 0:23:35.199 very long criminal record. And that is the story of 0:23:35.280 --> 0:23:44.280 another heist south of the Yarra in Melbourne Town. Thanks 0:23:44.280 --> 0:23:47.280 for listening. Life and Crimes is a Sunday Herald Sun 0:23:47.320 --> 0:23:52.000 production for True Crime Australia. Our producer is Johnty Burton. 0:23:52.840 --> 0:23:56.720 For my columns, features and more, go to harold'sun dot 0:23:56.720 --> 0:24:02.240 com dot au forward slash Andrew rule one word. For 0:24:02.440 --> 0:24:08.000 advertising inquiries, go to news podcasts sold at news dot 0:24:08.040 --> 0:24:13.680 com dot au. That is all one word news podcast's sold. 0:24:14.200 --> 0:24:18.240 And if you want further information about this episode, links 0:24:18.560 --> 0:24:19.960 are in the description