Speaker 1: If you saw a couple of cars go pass with
Speaker 1: no number plates, being driven by furtive looking people wearing
Speaker 1: black hoodies, sunglasses and possibly high vis vests, you would
Speaker 1: now know that you witnessed the aftermath of a very cheeky,
Speaker 1: brazen crime. A clever, cunning, plausible kid, quick with a joke,
Speaker 1: quick with a smoke, and a good line of patter,
Speaker 1: and headed from an early age towards a life of crime.
Speaker 1: I'm Andrew Rule. This is life and crimes. Well. One
Speaker 1: of the interesting crime stories this week was the brazen
Speaker 1: theft of forty five brand new unregistered cars or motor
Speaker 1: vehicles from an open yard, an open storage yard I
Speaker 1: think you would call it in Salmon Street, Port, Melbourne.
Speaker 1: Now this happened on Sunday afternoon, about mid afternoon, and
Speaker 1: sometime between that time and six thirty next morning on
Speaker 1: the Monday morning, these cars were driven out. Now what
Speaker 1: we think happened is two chaps rolled up in a
Speaker 1: vehicle and they were wearing of course high viz vests
Speaker 1: because when you want to be invisible, you must wear
Speaker 1: high vis and because they had the orange high viz
Speaker 1: sleeveless vests on, they were able to wander over to
Speaker 1: the gate of this big open yard where these cars
Speaker 1: are stored after being brought off ships, and I think
Speaker 1: they were able to just cut the chain or otherwise
Speaker 1: open it fairly easily. And interestingly, there was a big
Speaker 1: enough gap behind the gate that they opened for cars
Speaker 1: to come in and out. There were not lockable bollards
Speaker 1: in place or anything like that, so as soon as
Speaker 1: they opened those gates, I think probably just opened with
Speaker 1: bolt cutters. I might be wrong something like that. They
Speaker 1: were able to go inside and pinch cars. Now, it
Speaker 1: would appear that when these cars are brought in from
Speaker 1: the ships they have to be driven off. They obviously
Speaker 1: have their keys in them, which they must leave in
Speaker 1: them either in the ignition or on the floor or somewhere,
Speaker 1: and they have a little bit of fuel, not much.
Speaker 1: It turns out that some of these cars were found
Speaker 1: not far away because they had such little fuel in
Speaker 1: them that they had to abandon them. But most of
Speaker 1: them disappeared. That is forty five cars, including twenty odd
Speaker 1: Honda Civic late model Honda Civis brand new, and various
Speaker 1: types of van and various scoters and so on and
Speaker 1: so forth. I'm not sure which ones they thought were
Speaker 1: the most valuable or the most resaleable. But I suspect
Speaker 1: that if the thieves get away with these cars, they
Speaker 1: will end up probably shipping them into state, you would imagine,
Speaker 1: and they're doctoring them up with false identities from other vehicles,
Speaker 1: maybe wrecked cars or whatever it might be, or maybe
Speaker 1: they stripped them for parts. They might be all sorts
Speaker 1: of ways of profiting from this crime if you have
Speaker 1: so many brand new cars to choose from. It took
Speaker 1: quite a long while for the thieves to do this
Speaker 1: because in effect there were about ten people involved, and
Speaker 1: the police believe that what happened was having got into
Speaker 1: the car yard this handful of people, they then jumped
Speaker 1: on their mobile phones and called in their mates and
Speaker 1: mates of mates to turn up quickly and come along
Speaker 1: and help move cars. So they'd drive them out through
Speaker 1: the gate and then somebody else would jump in one
Speaker 1: and head off, and they scattered all over Melbourne. Now
Speaker 1: the balloon has gone up on Monday morning, that is
Speaker 1: Monday morning, October the twenty first, I think it was,
Speaker 1: And by the middle of that afternoon the police had
Speaker 1: arrested one forty two year old woman who I think
Speaker 1: is from Paran, and that woman was arrested at broad Meadows,
Speaker 1: so I think she's a Pran resident arrested at broad Meadows.
Speaker 1: And there's relatively clear CCTV footage of a woman that
Speaker 1: we would presume is the arrested woman at the scene.
Speaker 1: She's standing outside a vehicle that clearly these people have
Speaker 1: driven to the car yard. She's wearing big dark sunglasses surprise, surprise,
Speaker 1: and a black top and some fairly sort of dirty
Speaker 1: looking tracksuit bottoms. No surprises there. At the time of
Speaker 1: recording our podcast, it would appear that at least seventeen
Speaker 1: of these cars have been recovered, so not all of
Speaker 1: them got where they were going because they didn't have
Speaker 1: enough fuel or the crooks decided that some of them
Speaker 1: they didn't want on. Presuming that some of these scooters
Speaker 1: that were easy to get out of the place may
Speaker 1: not be as profitable an item on the black market
Speaker 1: as some of the other vehicles, I think some of
Speaker 1: the others, like the Hondas and others, were a better
Speaker 1: proposition for criminals to profit from. In effect, of course,
Speaker 1: the crooks had a convoy of cars leaving Salmon Street
Speaker 1: and then heading out into the urbs that would give
Speaker 1: police a bit of an idea which way they were heading,
Speaker 1: because they would be able to pick up some other
Speaker 1: security footage from different businesses along the way, and presumably
Speaker 1: there are traffic cameras and so forth set up that
Speaker 1: would give police a bit of an idea of where
Speaker 1: many of these cars went. Now, they are unregistered, which
Speaker 1: means they've been driven off without number plates. So the
Speaker 1: giveaway for anyone who thinks they've seen this is brand
Speaker 1: new cars, no number plates, and some of them in
Speaker 1: fact still had the plastic sticky sheeting that they use
Speaker 1: to cover cars when they are being transported by ship.
Speaker 1: Some of them still had that stuff on them, so
Speaker 1: they would stand out a bit. If you're out on
Speaker 1: a Sunday drive and you saw a couple of cars
Speaker 1: go past with no number plates, being driven by furtive
Speaker 1: looking people wearing black hoodies, sunglasses and possibly high vis vests,
Speaker 1: you would now know that you witnessed the aftermath of
Speaker 1: a very cheeky, brazen crime. But this is not the
Speaker 1: first time that such a thing has happened in that area.
Speaker 1: This reminded veteran reporters of other events, and one that
Speaker 1: comes to mind is the story recounted to this reporter
Speaker 1: many years ago by David McMillan. Now, McMillan is someone
Speaker 1: that our listeners will recall is the man we dubbed mcvillain.
Speaker 1: Mcvillain is David McMillan, who I think was actually born
Speaker 1: in London to Australian parents. And some of you will
Speaker 1: recall that he grew up here in Melbourne and went
Speaker 1: to Caulfield Grammar with people like Nick Cave and others,
Speaker 1: and Christopher Scase I think also went there and various
Speaker 1: other people. And mcvillaan was always a very naughty lad.
Speaker 1: I think he might have been expelled from Corfield Grammar
Speaker 1: for being bad. There was always talk that he was
Speaker 1: a person who would steal credit cards and cash, and
Speaker 1: that he would buy and sell drugs, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 1: He was always a clever, cunning, plausible kid, quick with
Speaker 1: a joke, quick with a smoke, and a good line
Speaker 1: of patter, and headed from an early age towards a
Speaker 1: life of crime. And David McMillan would go on to
Speaker 1: become an international drug runner. He would go on to
Speaker 1: become someone who was locked up in Australia for a
Speaker 1: lengthy period of time and locked up in what we
Speaker 1: call the Bangkok Hilton, which is the biggest, baddest jail
Speaker 1: in Asia probably and he notably escaped from the Bangkok
Speaker 1: Hilton in Thailand using a very very ingenious method to
Speaker 1: get over the wall, and probably also using some of
Speaker 1: his ill gotten gains from drug running to bribe the
Speaker 1: very bribeable guards who were looking after him in the
Speaker 1: Bangkok Hilton. And so having reminded ourselves about who David
Speaker 1: McMillan was, we will go back to his early days
Speaker 1: in Melbourne. Now when he's in his early twenties, this
Speaker 1: young fella, he's been kicked out a school, he's picked
Speaker 1: up the odd job in advertising in cinemas and other places,
Speaker 1: but he's starting to hang around with crooks. He's running
Speaker 1: Heroine into the country. He was smart, he was cunning,
Speaker 1: he was clever, and he was a guy who took
Speaker 1: advantage of the system as it then was, and the
Speaker 1: system back in the seventies was open to exploitation and corruption.
Speaker 1: What he was able to do back then, and what
Speaker 1: cunning crooks did then, was to equip themselves with false
Speaker 1: passports that were absolutely genuine to look at and in
Speaker 1: a sense they were genuine passports, but they were made
Speaker 1: out to people in the wrong names. They were real passports,
Speaker 1: but the names and photographs in them were false. And
Speaker 1: what he'd do is go to the death notices from
Speaker 1: around the time, say he was born, say he was
Speaker 1: born in nineteen fifty six. He go to death notices
Speaker 1: from around that time, and he would find the odd
Speaker 1: young child that had died, or baby a stillborn birth,
Speaker 1: or a young child that had died. He would then
Speaker 1: find the details of that child's birth, often by going
Speaker 1: to cemeteries and writing down the details of their birth
Speaker 1: and so forth from the headstones, and that would equip
Speaker 1: him to go to birth, death and marriages and get
Speaker 1: himself a birth certificate in that person's name. And in
Speaker 1: that era, before computerization, the records weren't all linked up together,
Speaker 1: and so if you got a birth certificate, you know,
Speaker 1: basically typed up in hand written and all the rest
Speaker 1: of it from the appropriate government office in Melbourne. I
Speaker 1: think one was in La Trope Street, it doesn't matter
Speaker 1: where it was. You could go there and get them
Speaker 1: and then he would take that and he could set
Speaker 1: up bank accounts and set up other means of identity,
Speaker 1: and that would be able to be used or abused
Speaker 1: manipulated to get a passport in that dead kid's name
Speaker 1: as if the child had lived and was now an adult.
Speaker 1: And so there our friend McMillan would be with a
Speaker 1: passport that said Michael Jones or whatever it might be,
Speaker 1: and he was able to use that technique to get
Speaker 1: multiple passports for himself and others, and they would use
Speaker 1: those passports to travel the world and bring back Heroine.
Speaker 1: The beautiful thing about the passports scam was that he
Speaker 1: could fly into highly suspicious destinations in Asia, such as
Speaker 1: Bangkok and places in Vietnam, perhaps the Middle East, India
Speaker 1: wherever places were known sources of cheap drugs, he could
Speaker 1: obtain the drugs. He could then fly out of those
Speaker 1: places using a different passport and go to somewhere like
Speaker 1: Sweden or something like that. Then he would fly into
Speaker 1: London from Sweden. Then, depending which passport he'd used, he
Speaker 1: would then have established himself as having traveled to Sweden,
Speaker 1: then to London back to Australia. And so when the
Speaker 1: Australian authorities looked at whichever passport he produced, there was
Speaker 1: no sign of that guy having been in the Middle East,
Speaker 1: and therefore he would not be flagged for a search
Speaker 1: of his luggage. But of course what he had in
Speaker 1: his luggage was large amounts of heroin, and that meant
Speaker 1: that mcvillain was bringing in a heap of stuff. His
Speaker 1: couriers were bringing in a heap of contraband heroin, selling
Speaker 1: it for tens of thousands of dollars a week. And
Speaker 1: he had so much money, so much cash, money that
Speaker 1: he wouldn't even count at all. He described once to
Speaker 1: me that he would jam it all on a table
Speaker 1: with a weight on it. And he worked out that
Speaker 1: if you measured what he called nine inches, inches were
Speaker 1: what we used to measure things in the old days,
Speaker 1: and nine inches is roughly a man's handspan, and that
Speaker 1: amount of paper money in certain denominations, whichever, say, fifty
Speaker 1: dollar notes, was one hundred and forty thousand dollars or
Speaker 1: whatever it was, And so he had a rough idea
Speaker 1: just by looking at a pile of notes of particular
Speaker 1: denominations how much money it was. But he didn't bother
Speaker 1: counting it too much, because it didn't really matter within
Speaker 1: a few thousand if he was missing some or had
Speaker 1: more just didn't matter to him. This is the man who,
Speaker 1: at the age of twenty two, was making his way
Speaker 1: in the criminal underworld of Melbourne, an underworld he'd never
Speaker 1: grown up in. He'd grown up in middle class in
Speaker 1: a suburban eastern suburbs. As I said, he'd gone to
Speaker 1: court for grammar. His mother was a beautiful, stylish, fashionable
Speaker 1: woman who happened to live with one of the leading
Speaker 1: society abortionists of the era. So there was a bit
Speaker 1: of law breaking going on. But he wasn't a kid
Speaker 1: who had rubbed shoulders with bank robbers and all the
Speaker 1: rest of it. But now he started to do that
Speaker 1: because that was the way he rolled, really and he
Speaker 1: got mixed up with a really good little armed robber
Speaker 1: and truck hijacker, a low called Danny McIntosh who was
Speaker 1: particularly good at those dark arts. And Danny McIntosh and
Speaker 1: some others have heard that they can pull a massive
Speaker 1: high in not Port Melbourne, but right next door in
Speaker 1: South Melbourne. The target is a place called Guthrie Trading.
Speaker 1: Guthrie Trading in those days in the seventies used to
Speaker 1: import guns, among other things, and worded leaked out this
Speaker 1: is the thing about guns, guns, cash and drugs. They
Speaker 1: attract people. They attract a lot of attention. And the
Speaker 1: thing about guns is they attract the attention of not
Speaker 1: just crooks as in criminals. They attract the attention of
Speaker 1: people who like guns. So you'll get prison guards, you'll
Speaker 1: get police, you'll get ex soldiers, you'll get hunters, you'll
Speaker 1: get you know, possibly farmers. Guns are something that a
Speaker 1: lot of people are quite interested in, not necessarily because
Speaker 1: they want to rob banks or something, but they just
Speaker 1: fancy them. And therefore it's wise not to talk about
Speaker 1: where they are, or where they might be stored, or
Speaker 1: where they might be imported. But someone somewhere had leaked
Speaker 1: that Guthrie Trading had a brand new consignment straight off
Speaker 1: the boat of something like one hundred and eighty brand
Speaker 1: new pistols. There. This is Colts and it was Barretta's
Speaker 1: and it was a whole heap of brand new stuff
Speaker 1: worth good money on the legit market, worth good money,
Speaker 1: but worth a hell of a lot more on the
Speaker 1: black market, because people will pay for that sort of stuff.
Speaker 1: And what happened was Danny McIntosh was running the show,
Speaker 1: but one of the guys wearing the balaclavas with him
Speaker 1: we think was probably David McMillan, and I think there
Speaker 1: was Danny McIntosh plus five others, six altogether. They go
Speaker 1: into this warehouse, the gun warehouse, with Balaclav's, with bags
Speaker 1: and with guns of their own. The gunman hold up
Speaker 1: the gun business or the gun place, the gun warehouse,
Speaker 1: and they fill all their bags with so many pistols
Speaker 1: that can hardly carry them. And then they leave wearing
Speaker 1: their bella clavers, and they I think threw them in
Speaker 1: the backs of cars and things, and the way they went. Now,
Speaker 1: the police was so unhappy about this, so distraught that
Speaker 1: this had happened, that they sent out word to the underworld.
Speaker 1: In those days, the police were inclined to rub shoulders
Speaker 1: with certain members of the underworld. The consorting squad would
Speaker 1: consort with known criminals in order to find out information
Speaker 1: and possibly even pass on a bit. And the word
Speaker 1: went out from the police who couldn't find these guns,
Speaker 1: they raided places, couldn't find them, and said, we want
Speaker 1: you blogs to make sure that those guns don't end
Speaker 1: up on the street in the hands of idiots where
Speaker 1: they will endanger the public, or be used for random crimes,
Speaker 1: or endanger police. So basicly, the coppers put the crooks
Speaker 1: on notice not to be selling those guns in pubs
Speaker 1: to lunatics, which was very nice of them really, and
Speaker 1: indeed they were fairly careful. According to David McMillan, who
Speaker 1: did not want to incriminate himself, but he did say this,
Speaker 1: he said, they were broken up into seven different cases
Speaker 1: of guns. I think there might have been a total
Speaker 1: of seven people involved in this, and each case they
Speaker 1: stripped them down, pull them apart, coated them in oil
Speaker 1: so that they wouldn't rust or otherwise be harmed by
Speaker 1: the elements or anything else or moisture, and then each
Speaker 1: person stole away into the night with their cache of
Speaker 1: stolen guns. And what happened to all of them we
Speaker 1: won't know. Probably most of them are still out there somewhere.
Speaker 1: It's possible that some of them ended up back in
Speaker 1: police hands and that some didn't. But the bit we
Speaker 1: do know is that if we trust David McMillan, and
Speaker 1: I don't know why you would, but anyway, this is
Speaker 1: his story. McMillan, who was a very flashy, pretentious character,
Speaker 1: as he later admitted, he had a beautiful leather suit
Speaker 1: mate and in this leather suit. He had leather pockets
Speaker 1: inserted in this sort of a long top coat. So
Speaker 1: he was like some sort of cross between Batman and
Speaker 1: Wyatt Earth or something, or bat Masterson maybe, And he
Speaker 1: had these long leather lined pockets and he would use
Speaker 1: those instead of holsters. And what he had were two
Speaker 1: matched pistols, twenty two pistols with silences on. Now, the
Speaker 1: combination of a target pistol with a silencer ended up
Speaker 1: about eighteen inches long, which is in the modern money
Speaker 1: is around the forty centim say, are a bit more,
Speaker 1: and that made them quite a clumsy item. And he
Speaker 1: had one on each side of his body in his coat,
Speaker 1: and for a little while there he said he used
Speaker 1: to wear this thing around. But he also on one
Speaker 1: occasion he wanted to recover some money from a fellow
Speaker 1: called Jacob, who owed some cash to David's girlfriend, Clelia Vigano.
Speaker 1: Clelia Vigeno was the daughter of a very famous and
Speaker 1: much loved Melbourne restauranteur, and Clelia ended up dying in
Speaker 1: a fire in fairly women's prison, which is very tragic.
Speaker 1: But this is back before the tragedy of the fire,
Speaker 1: and David is trying to impress Clelia with his sort
Speaker 1: of criminal no how and all the rest of it,
Speaker 1: and as well as he's two silence pistols in his
Speaker 1: coat pockets. He carried a big heavy handgun, something like
Speaker 1: a three point fifty seven I think it was, and
Speaker 1: in it it had the heaviest load of copper jacketed bullets.
Speaker 1: These are the ones that will go through anything except
Speaker 1: an engine block. They're made for stopping cars when police
Speaker 1: shoot at cars whatever. There he is in Clelia's parents
Speaker 1: restaurant building. It's a big building. It's got multiple floors.
Speaker 1: He is in the floor above where the restaurant area
Speaker 1: is and the pub area the bar area right. And
Speaker 1: it is about ten past ten in the evening, which
Speaker 1: was very lucky because if it had been ten minutes
Speaker 1: to ten, the bar below would have had quite a
Speaker 1: lot of people in it. It was ten after ten,
Speaker 1: which meant theoretically it should have been clear of people.
Speaker 1: And that matters because while he's mucking around in the
Speaker 1: bathroom upstairs, as can happen, he accidentally triggers the trigger
Speaker 1: on the three point fifty seven, the big heavy handgun
Speaker 1: and the copper jacketed bullet ultra powerful heavy load et cetera.
Speaker 1: Goes straight through the floor. It goes off like a cannon.
Speaker 1: It goes straight through the floor, that wooden floorboards into
Speaker 1: the bar below. Now, as he pointed out later when
Speaker 1: he told this, had it been earlier, it probably would
Speaker 1: have killed somebody. But no one was there and so
Speaker 1: it didn't hurt anybody. But the rest of the family
Speaker 1: got to know all about it. And when he came
Speaker 1: down for breakfast next morning, Cloudlya's father, mister Vigano, said,
Speaker 1: no more guns. If there's any more guns, well you
Speaker 1: won't be coming back here. And he was right, and
Speaker 1: for once in his miserable life, David McMillan took the
Speaker 1: hint and he gave up walking around carrying guns. As
Speaker 1: he set himself, it wasn't really his go. Had he
Speaker 1: been even smarter, he would have given up running drugs,
Speaker 1: but he didn't, and in the end he would end
Speaker 1: up arrested and in jail in several countries around the world,
Speaker 1: and now in his late sixties, approaching seventy. In fact,
Speaker 1: it's hard to know whether he's inside or out. But
Speaker 1: he will die broke, and he will die with a
Speaker 1: very long criminal record. And that is the story of
Speaker 1: another heist south of the Yarra in Melbourne Town. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening. Life and Crimes is a Sunday Herald Sun
Speaker 1: production for True Crime Australia. Our producer is Johnty Burton.
Speaker 1: For my columns, features and more, go to harold'sun dot
Speaker 1: com dot au forward slash Andrew rule one word. For
Speaker 1: advertising inquiries, go to news podcasts sold at news dot
Speaker 1: com dot au. That is all one word news podcast's sold.
Speaker 1: And if you want further information about this episode, links
Speaker 1: are in the description