Speaker 1: Because then they'd swap in. The informer gets out of
Speaker 1: doing time for the crime that he did, and the
Speaker 1: bloke who didn't do the crime goes inside.
Speaker 2: They would go.
Speaker 1: Outside in the morning there would be three inch nails
Speaker 1: jammed under the tires of their car, so that if
Speaker 1: you drove the car forward or back, the nails would
Speaker 1: pierce the tires and flatten them. They drive off around
Speaker 1: the corner and by the time they've gone, you know,
Speaker 1: one hundred meters, they hear a massive explosion, kaboom. I'm
Speaker 1: Andrew Rules, Life and Crimes. It's staggering just how much
Speaker 1: policing and law and order have changed in a lifetime.
Speaker 1: And I was reminded of this recently when the names
Speaker 1: of Joey and Shirley Hamilton came up. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: even why they came up, but as soon as I
Speaker 1: heard those names, those words, I thought of that couple
Speaker 1: and how famous or notorious they were in the mid
Speaker 1: to late seventies.
Speaker 2: And very early eighties.
Speaker 1: For about six or eight years, they were extremely well
Speaker 1: known in Victoria. They had a sort of an outlaw
Speaker 1: edge to them that was part Bonnie and Clyde. There
Speaker 1: was a little bit of Sonny and sher because Shirley
Speaker 1: was a well known folks singer called Shirley Jacobs before
Speaker 1: she married Joey Hamilton, the criminal and getaway driver and
Speaker 1: all that sort of stuff. And they were an odd
Speaker 1: couple who made the news for all the wrong reasons,
Speaker 1: mainly because they became the target of a sustained campaign
Speaker 1: of harassment and violence that could have cost them their
Speaker 1: lives and indeed ended up causing them to go on
Speaker 1: the run. And that is a staggering thing that two
Speaker 1: people in Melbourne, Victoria were pursued by rogue police blatantly
Speaker 1: and openly for at least two years and lived literally
Speaker 1: in fear of their lives. People might find that hard
Speaker 1: to believe, but trust me, it's true.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: Joey Hamilton, as I mentioned, he was at Krim. He
Speaker 1: was a pretty dashing sort of crook, sort of ruggedly
Speaker 1: handsome bloke. His reputation according to senior police one told
Speaker 1: me once he said he was a wheelman. He was
Speaker 1: a getaway driver, which he may well have been, like
Speaker 1: a lot of other crooks of that time, you know,
Speaker 1: Russell Cox and Raymond Patrick, Chuck Bennett and a.
Speaker 2: Lot of those guys.
Speaker 1: He had come up through the boys' homes. He had
Speaker 1: learned his stuff in the boy's homes because he'd started
Speaker 1: out as a poor boy on the wrong side of
Speaker 1: the tracks, had stolen something and it went from bad
Speaker 1: to worse. Christopher Dale Flannery a lot of these guys kids.
Speaker 2: With a bit of dash.
Speaker 1: And they got into trouble young and then they would
Speaker 1: be sent to boys home and then the treatment they
Speaker 1: got into boys' homes which was uniformly vicious, nasty, brutal,
Speaker 1: and often sexually deviate. They were often the subjects of
Speaker 1: sexual abuse and physical.
Speaker 2: Abuse these boys.
Speaker 1: That turned some of these guys into lifetime crooks, and
Speaker 1: often very dangerous lifetime crooks. Now Joey Hamilton, Joey Hamilton
Speaker 1: wasn't a vicious killer. I don't believe he probably didn't
Speaker 1: mind a fight. I think he probably knew his way
Speaker 1: around guns. But as a crook, I think probably his
Speaker 1: go was more to use his brain more than he's
Speaker 1: braun and he did have some elements of charm and
Speaker 1: intelligence despite the fact he'd left school at what he
Speaker 1: called form two year eight. He could read and write
Speaker 1: recentably well, and he did have a sort of Native Intelligence,
Speaker 1: and it was when Shell Jacobs, who is forgotten now,
Speaker 1: but Shirley Jacobs was a pretty big deal folks singer
Speaker 1: in Victoria, particularly back in the sixties and seventies.
Speaker 2: Shirley Jacobs.
Speaker 1: That was a married name. Her first husband's name was Jacobs.
Speaker 1: She was born and bred in Euroa in Victoria and
Speaker 1: then was Shirley Gilbert. She was the daughter of a
Speaker 1: former British Army officer. She was probably the smartest kid
Speaker 1: in the class at EUROBA.
Speaker 2: I think she was a.
Speaker 1: Spelling champion, and very good at music and all that
Speaker 1: sort of stuff, reading, writing music. She's the sort of
Speaker 1: girl that may well have been, you know, ducks of
Speaker 1: her class up in the Bush. She comes to Melbourne,
Speaker 1: she goes to i think a legal and secretarial school
Speaker 1: for legal secretaries, something like that. And she was vivacious,
Speaker 1: good looking, interesting, and she married young. She married a
Speaker 1: young dentist called Horst Jacobs, who was a respectable dentist
Speaker 1: who made a good living and all the rest of it.
Speaker 1: And she had two daughters and might have been Debbie
Speaker 1: and Jesse. Their names don't matter, but Debbie was certainly
Speaker 1: one of them. And of course the daughters were born
Speaker 1: when Shirley was quite young. She later split up with
Speaker 1: her husband Horst, and she became this folk singer who
Speaker 1: used to play on television. She made records, she appeared
Speaker 1: live at a lot of pubs and little folk festivals
Speaker 1: and all that sort of stuff. She was quite well known,
Speaker 1: and it was in the course of this that she
Speaker 1: became a sort of activist, slightly left of center figure,
Speaker 1: a bit bohemian, a bit intellectual, a bit against the
Speaker 1: government type of person. And like a lot of people
Speaker 1: in that era when the Vietnam War provided a flashpoint,
Speaker 1: she was someone who beat anti war and anti conscription.
Speaker 1: And like a lot of other people of her ilk
Speaker 1: who lived in the in the suburbs and followed the
Speaker 1: things that she followed, she had a leaning towards the
Speaker 1: rights of prisoners and the criminal classes, because prisoners in
Speaker 1: those days were treated pretty badly, treated violently. They were
Speaker 1: treated essentially as if they had no rights, and they
Speaker 1: pretty well were at the whim of the people in
Speaker 1: charge of the system, that is, the police on the
Speaker 1: outside and the prison officers on the inside. And I
Speaker 1: have to say, looking back on it, that a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff that happened to people in boys homes and
Speaker 1: in jails was pretty bad news. Shirley was abreast of
Speaker 1: all that sort of stuff. She and other musicians would
Speaker 1: occasionally go into jails and do concerts, you know, the
Speaker 1: sort of Johnny Cash syndrome. And she went into Penridge
Speaker 1: one day in the early seventies. I'm going to say
Speaker 1: during the beaching. The beach inquiry into the police was
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy five, and Joey Hamilton had been locked up
Speaker 1: in Penridge in nineteen seventy three for an armed robbery
Speaker 1: that he did not commit. He'd been framed. Now, he
Speaker 1: was a scallywag. He did have form, he had done
Speaker 1: things in the past, but he was a guy who
Speaker 1: did not get along with the police because, unlike most
Speaker 1: crooks in the privacy of a police station an interview room,
Speaker 1: he would not do deals with the police. He wouldn't
Speaker 1: sell out, he wouldn't pay them bribes, which many of
Speaker 1: them solicited, and he would not sell out other crooks
Speaker 1: with information. Most crooks would do business with the police
Speaker 1: if a push came to shove, and Joey Hamilton would not.
Speaker 1: Sort of his personal code of honor, whatever you call it.
Speaker 1: He was therefore much hated by the police because he
Speaker 1: was more of a thorn in their side, and when
Speaker 1: they got him in, he would stay silent. He wouldn't talk,
Speaker 1: he wouldn't give them info and trade and do all
Speaker 1: the stuff that a lot of crooks used to do.
Speaker 1: And he especially wouldn't lead them to large cases of cash,
Speaker 1: which is the main hobby of the robbery squad, the breakers,
Speaker 1: the consorts, and the major crime squad. In those days,
Speaker 1: the elites, heavy squads were very inclined to take cash
Speaker 1: from crooks.
Speaker 2: They called it.
Speaker 1: Taxing them, and semi officially they would put it in
Speaker 1: I think they called a slush fund. A slash fund
Speaker 1: paid for interstate police to come down and be entertained.
Speaker 1: It paid sometimes for trips into state to pick up
Speaker 1: other crooks, incidental expenses, whatever, whatever, perhaps used to pay
Speaker 1: informers informally that sort of stuff. Of course, the slash
Speaker 1: fund was a good cover story for bet detectives who
Speaker 1: took cash and put it in their back pocket or
Speaker 1: under a brick, or put it in their mother in
Speaker 1: law's bank account or whatever. This sort of stuff went on,
Speaker 1: and it went on a lot. It was a cash
Speaker 1: economy in those days. Joey wouldn't play that game, so
Speaker 1: they hated Joey. Nineteen seventy three, the detectives in Russell
Speaker 1: Street drag Joey in and they tell him that they're
Speaker 1: going to charge him with robbing a Thornberry milk bar.
Speaker 1: Joey says, well, I wasn't there, I didn't do it.
Speaker 1: I've got an alibio. I can show you where I was.
Speaker 1: And they said, well, we don't care what to tell us.
Speaker 1: We're going to charge you with it. And we're charging
Speaker 1: with it because we had this guy here called Eric
Speaker 1: Houston alias Eric Grant. And Eric Grant was a crook.
Speaker 1: He was a robber and he was a give up.
Speaker 1: He used to sell out other crooks all the time.
Speaker 1: He was a police informer in several states, and he's
Speaker 1: the sort of guy that is much hated by other
Speaker 1: honorable crooks. And Eric Grant because he was an informer,
Speaker 1: the police wanted to protect him and look after him,
Speaker 1: and they also wanted to get Joey Hamilton because they
Speaker 1: didn't like him. So they persuaded Eric Grant, who had
Speaker 1: done this robbery of the Thornbury milk bar, to say
Speaker 1: that it was Joey Hamilton and not himself. And it
Speaker 1: was a neat swap in the informer gets out of
Speaker 1: doing time for the crime that he did and the
Speaker 1: bloke who didn't do the crime goes inside. And that's
Speaker 1: what happened. Joey Hamilton went into Pendridge charged with an
Speaker 1: armed robbery, convicted of an arm robbery on very very
Speaker 1: body evidence, on a statement that he hadn't signed. It
Speaker 1: was just a complete fabrication. He went in seventy three
Speaker 1: for eighty years. When the Beach Inquiry started in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy five, this was an inquiry a political response to
Speaker 1: the growing unrest about bent police and rogue police and
Speaker 1: police misbehavior. And this inquiry had been brought on by
Speaker 1: all sorts of things, but mainly by an activist called
Speaker 1: doctor Bertram Wayner. Now doctor Bertram Wayner had exposed the
Speaker 1: abortion rackets in Melbourne. He exposed the fact that homicide
Speaker 1: squad detectives were taking large bribes from organized abortionists. It
Speaker 1: was a massive underwel moneymaker in those days when abortions
Speaker 1: were illegal and a little like our tobacco shop problem now.
Speaker 1: Because it was illegal, it meant that certain surgeons and
Speaker 1: doctors could make a lot of money by performing abortions,
Speaker 1: and other people did them too. Nurses and people with
Speaker 1: no medical training would procure abortions in mostly unfortunate young
Speaker 1: women who didn't want to have a baby out of
Speaker 1: wedlock by and large, and they would pay cash for this.
Speaker 2: They would pay.
Speaker 1: Hundreds of dollars for an abortion at a time when
Speaker 1: you know, a laborer might make less than one hundred
Speaker 1: dollars a week, so this was a cash cow. Abortion
Speaker 1: hast paid the Bent Police. This led to this sort
Speaker 1: of corrupt scenario. This persuaded Bertram Wayner and others to
Speaker 1: point the finger at the Bent Police, and this forced
Speaker 1: the government of the day, the Hamer State government, to
Speaker 1: call an inquiry and the head of the inquiry was
Speaker 1: Barry Beach QC, a Queen's Council. He was a conservative.
Speaker 1: He was politically aligned with the Hamer Liberal government, so
Speaker 1: he was conservative and probably on what we would think
Speaker 1: of as right wing these days, but essentially a very
Speaker 1: honest and decent lawyer, upper middle class man with decent
Speaker 1: instincts to do the right thing by and large, and
Speaker 1: for him it was like swimming in treacle because he
Speaker 1: calls witnesses he calls for complaints and complainants to come
Speaker 1: and give evidence, and he finds that amazingly a lot
Speaker 1: of these people who have got complaints against the police
Speaker 1: are intimidated by police and decide not to give certain evidence.
Speaker 1: They get sick on the day, or they don't want
Speaker 1: to talk on the day. He finds that the police
Speaker 1: that he calls before his tribunal and requires them to
Speaker 1: give evidence, he finds that I think many of them,
Speaker 1: perhaps fifty five of them, gave perjured evidence to him.
Speaker 1: But he also said that many of them had given
Speaker 1: perjured evidence in trials against people like Joey Hamilton and others.
Speaker 1: So this inquiry, it's the old thing about never calling
Speaker 1: an inquiry unless you know what it's going to discover.
Speaker 1: What Beach uncovered was a rat's nest of corruption in
Speaker 1: the Victoria Police, which to some extent echoed what we
Speaker 1: know what's happening in Sydney the Roger Rogerson Sydney, and
Speaker 1: in Queensland the russ Hins, Sir Terence Lewis, Brisbane, the
Speaker 1: Moonlight State, and also in Perth, which was a pretty
Speaker 1: hot town. So Melbourne was not much better than the
Speaker 1: other places. It's just that the corruption he tended to
Speaker 1: be below the level of superintendents and commanders and inspectors probably,
Speaker 1: And so we have a situation where Barry Beach's discovering
Speaker 1: all this bad stuff. One of the bad things he discovers,
Speaker 1: and the one he really nails home, is that Joey
Speaker 1: Hamilton was totally framed for this armed robbery back in
Speaker 1: seventy three. And because Joey Hamilton is willing to give
Speaker 1: straight evidence until the absolute truth, fearlessly, and because he
Speaker 1: can call other witnesses who will support his view of
Speaker 1: what happened did not Happenoe Hamilton, he's declared by Beats
Speaker 1: to have been locked up on false evidence, and therefore
Speaker 1: technically he should have been given a fresh trial. He
Speaker 1: probably should have been paid a large amount of money
Speaker 1: for being locked up under false pretenses. What actually happened
Speaker 1: was that the government wriggled around it by giving Joey
Speaker 1: Hamilton a sort of a pardon. They took him out
Speaker 1: of jail, They paroled him very early and said, well
Speaker 1: you're out of jail now, you've got to be on
Speaker 1: parole and report to the parole for eight eight months
Speaker 1: or something. And they sort of fell between two stills.
Speaker 1: They didn't give him a fresh trial, they didn't give
Speaker 1: him a full on pardon, but they got him out
Speaker 1: of his cell. And he'd been doing it in h
Speaker 1: division in Pentridge. He'd been breaking rocks with a hammer,
Speaker 1: been doing it pretty hard inside before he gets out.
Speaker 1: I think he got out in seventy six after more
Speaker 1: than three years. While he is inside, Shirley Jacobs, the
Speaker 1: Folks singer, does a concert inside, and while she's doing that,
Speaker 1: she meets Joey. Joey is one of the crimsons setting
Speaker 1: up the amps or whatever, setting up the chairs or
Speaker 1: whatever it is, and he makes an impression on Shirley.
Speaker 1: He's pretty charming, he's pretty funny whatever. He is a
Speaker 1: ruggedly handsome sort of bloke, the charm that some crooks had,
Speaker 1: you know, part conman, worldly, knock about and irresistible to
Speaker 1: some people who like that sort of stuff. And Shirley
Speaker 1: fell for Joey, and Joey fell for Shirley. There was
Speaker 1: a fifteen year gap in their ages. He was in
Speaker 1: his mid thirties, she was around the fifty mark. But
Speaker 1: they were swinging hands seriously. As soon as Joey was
Speaker 1: released in nineteen seventy six, and in fact they got married,
Speaker 1: which is why we are talking about Shirley and Joey Hamilton.
Speaker 1: They actually got married, much to the amusement of her daughters,
Speaker 1: who were teenagers at the time. But they rubbed along.
Speaker 1: The older daughter, Debbie was you know, she loved her
Speaker 1: mother and she'd like to see her mother happy, and
Speaker 1: so she would turn up and sort of talk to
Speaker 1: them and see them. And she told me last week
Speaker 1: when I found it tracked down, she said that, you know,
Speaker 1: she was keen to stay in touch with them.
Speaker 2: Mum.
Speaker 1: Joey she thought was charming and you know, good looking
Speaker 1: and all that stuff. But she said, I never really
Speaker 1: trusted him because you know, he had been a crook
Speaker 1: and I knew he had a volatile temper whatever whatever.
Speaker 1: And so they rubbed along. But Joey and Shirley they'd
Speaker 1: get a house in Station Street, Carlton. They immediately become
Speaker 1: the target because Joey has given this evidence against all
Speaker 1: these police. They become the target of reprisals. Then rogue detective,
Speaker 1: the very ones who had put him inside, they get
Speaker 1: the nod from their boss, and their boss at Russell
Speaker 1: Street at that time was Chief Superintendent Fat Harry Bennett.
Speaker 1: Phil Bennett, known as Fat Harry to everyone. He was
Speaker 1: a big, jovial, smiling, billy bunter sort of bloke, and
Speaker 1: he was as rotten as a book chop. He solicited
Speaker 1: bribes from all over the job. I think perhaps there
Speaker 1: was brothel money flowing into him and others. I think
Speaker 1: there was probably probably had been a party to the
Speaker 1: abortionists earlier. Maybe whatever was going on that there was
Speaker 1: an illicit quit in he would get a slice of it.
Speaker 2: There were sp bookies.
Speaker 1: Around at that time who made sure they were on
Speaker 1: the right side of the police. They would pay a
Speaker 1: bit of tax to the police. There were publicans around
Speaker 1: town who liked to trade after hours later than they should.
Speaker 1: Police would never pay for food or drink in their pubs,
Speaker 1: and they would probably slip them cash as well. So
Speaker 1: there were a lot of rackets like that going on
Speaker 1: in those days, ranging from petty corruption right through to
Speaker 1: the full blown object. Fat Harry Bennett gave the nod
Speaker 1: to rogue detectives who we won't actually name here because
Speaker 1: the two I'm thinking of I'm.
Speaker 2: Pretty sure are still alive.
Speaker 1: But we'll call one mister Phillips, which is not his
Speaker 1: real name. We'll call one mister Johnson, mister Phillips and
Speaker 1: mister Johnson. Okay, that is not their real names.
Speaker 2: These two fellows were pretty.
Speaker 1: Well known around town for various reasons. We can find
Speaker 1: their pictures on file now because they did get into
Speaker 1: enough trouble with other bent coppers that their photographs were
Speaker 1: taken and their stories were told. In the seventies and
Speaker 1: the eighties, these do they were pretty bad lads, and
Speaker 1: one of them had.
Speaker 2: A big habit of.
Speaker 1: Using jelly knite. I don't know if he'd come from
Speaker 1: a job or from the country or somewhere where he
Speaker 1: handled jelig nite. In those days, a lot of people
Speaker 1: were reasonably familiar with explosives and jelly knite, And know
Speaker 1: in my own family in the country, my father would
Speaker 1: blow up stumps with jelly knite, and a lot of
Speaker 1: farmers bought jeli knit and used it and were pretty
Speaker 1: good at it in a way that probably doesn't happen
Speaker 1: now so much. And so it was one of those
Speaker 1: things that criminals and coppers tended to use in those days.
Speaker 1: Criminals would use it to blow safees open, blow up
Speaker 1: in a building then blow up.
Speaker 2: In a safe.
Speaker 1: Coppers would use it to load up crims.
Speaker 2: They would wrap up a parcel of jelly knite and
Speaker 2: put it.
Speaker 1: Under a criminal's Christmas tree and then raid the place
Speaker 1: and say, guess what you've got Jeli Knight under your
Speaker 1: Christmas tree and charge him with illegal possession of explosives.
Speaker 1: They would set little bombs for crooks, blow up their
Speaker 1: cars and stuff like that. These two Scullywag coppers got
Speaker 1: the nod to harass Joey and Shirley. Now there were
Speaker 1: already plenty of coppers harassing Joey and Shirley. They became
Speaker 1: the targets of this sustained campaign which I mentioned earlier.
Speaker 1: They would go outside in the morning there would be
Speaker 1: three inch nails jammed under the tires of their car,
Speaker 1: so that if you drove the car forward or back,
Speaker 1: the nails would pierce the tires and flatten them. Their
Speaker 1: rubbish spins every week would be emptied and strewn all
Speaker 1: over the street. They're rubbish strewn everywhere. Their windows or
Speaker 1: doors would be broken. The police would come around and
Speaker 1: break into their house under the guise of searching it
Speaker 1: when they went home. This went on and on. They
Speaker 1: would be hassled. If they went to a hotel to
Speaker 1: have a drink or whatever, they would be hassled, particularly Joey,
Speaker 1: and they would be told you can't drink here, this
Speaker 1: is a Coppers pub, and they would grab him and
Speaker 1: get him arrested for resist arrest, insulting words, all these
Speaker 1: bogus charges, and he would be taken to a police station,
Speaker 1: he would be stripped, humiliated, he'd be locked up for
Speaker 1: hours and then he'd finally be allowed to go home
Speaker 1: that night.
Speaker 2: They did this.
Speaker 1: Stuff over and over and over just to teach him
Speaker 1: a lesson about giving evidence to the Beach inquiry against them.
Speaker 1: This was highly organized and it was basically tacitly accepted
Speaker 1: by the police hierarchy to a pretty high level. Now,
Speaker 1: there's no doubt that the highest people in the pyramid
Speaker 1: of the police force knew it was happening, but just
Speaker 1: ignored it, and they chose to believe the crap they
Speaker 1: were told, which was this is just underworld shenanigans. Joey's
Speaker 1: been stood over by crooks whatever, it's nothing to do
Speaker 1: with us, boss, and that was clearly bullshit. But the
Speaker 1: chief figures of the police force chose to turn a
Speaker 1: blind eye to it, and the result of the blind
Speaker 1: eye was that they had an open slather. And what
Speaker 1: they did on the Monday morning of August the first,
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy eight, this is a winter morning, it's a Monday,
Speaker 1: it's about twenty past four am. A car and a
Speaker 1: marked car goes to Station Street, Carlton, near Joey and
Speaker 1: Shirley's little terrace house brick Terror's house checked by jail
Speaker 1: with other terrace houses. They're only in a one room
Speaker 1: wide et cetera. So you are very close to your neighbors.
Speaker 1: You are living the length of one brick from your neighbors,
Speaker 1: essentially because through the brick party wall. This car pulls
Speaker 1: up past Joey and Shirley's house. These three people in
Speaker 1: the car, there's two police, the two mister Johnson and
Speaker 1: mister Phillips, the ones I mentioned not their real names.
Speaker 1: And there's a third person in.
Speaker 2: The car a.
Speaker 1: Young reporter, a young reporter from a broad shair newspaper
Speaker 1: who has recently at that point come down from a
Speaker 1: country newspaper in the country, and he had been sent
Speaker 1: up to police rounds to.
Speaker 2: Work at Russell Street. As it was all.
Speaker 1: The newspapers had offices at Russell Street in those days
Speaker 1: where they would file their police and crime stories and
Speaker 1: the police rounds. People inevitably in those days are police
Speaker 1: rounds man, although there were some female reporters. Later they
Speaker 1: cultivated relationships with police, particularly with detectives in the heavy
Speaker 1: squads who did the big jobs arm robbery's, murders, all
Speaker 1: that stuff, and they would go drinking with the police
Speaker 1: at the City Court Hotel, which was just dagonally opposite
Speaker 1: the old City Courts up there near Russell Street Police station,
Speaker 1: and in the Police Club, which was just at the
Speaker 1: back of the Russell Street police complex. It was in
Speaker 1: McKenzie Street around the corner and it butted on to
Speaker 1: the actual Russell Street Police building. When the Police Club
Speaker 1: was a place where reporters were on remembers and we
Speaker 1: go there and have a parmajana or whatever and a
Speaker 1: couple of beers at a bit of a discount, and
Speaker 1: it was all a very woman fuzzy. But it wasn't
Speaker 1: woman fuzzy this night because our young reporter from the
Speaker 1: country who was drinking with coppers and going pig shooting
Speaker 1: with coppers and all this sort of stuff. They've invited
Speaker 1: him to come on this raid. I'm thinking that's how
Speaker 1: they would have sold it to him, a bit of
Speaker 1: an early morning raid. Tomorrow morning, meet us at four
Speaker 1: am or whatever. And he meets them, and he gets
Speaker 1: in the car with them and they go out to
Speaker 1: Station Street. The car is parked by one mister Johnson
Speaker 1: or mister Phillips, and the other one.
Speaker 2: Slopes off up the street with a parcel under his coat.
Speaker 1: Cold morning, he probably able to cut it, and next
Speaker 1: minute he comes back a bit faster than he went,
Speaker 1: runs back to the car, jumps in the car. They
Speaker 1: drive off around the corner, around the corner, and by
Speaker 1: the time they've gone you know, one hundred meters, they
Speaker 1: hear a massive explosion kaboom. And everybody in Carlton heard
Speaker 1: this explosion because it was big. And they keep driving
Speaker 1: and they go somewhere else and keep their heads down. Now,
Speaker 1: the third bloke in the car, the reporter, I don't
Speaker 1: know that he was overly happy about this, because when
Speaker 1: you look back on it, I think he thought, at best,
Speaker 1: I've been compromised, and at worst, if this had gone
Speaker 1: wrong and somebody had been injured or killed. I'm actually
Speaker 1: in a car with the guilty parties of my own.
Speaker 1: And I think as he has looked back on this
Speaker 1: incident over the last forty five years, he's probably wished
Speaker 1: he hadn't been there. And I rang him last week
Speaker 1: to ask him and it can give me a straight answer.
Speaker 1: But he made it clear that it would have been
Speaker 1: better if he hadn't been there. He also made it
Speaker 1: clear that he's very happy that no one was hurt,
Speaker 1: because to be a party to that would have been awful.
Speaker 1: Now it is a miracle no one was hurt. Jeli
Speaker 1: Knight is a fairly imprecise thing in the hands of
Speaker 1: relative amateurs. And you know, the difference between one stick
Speaker 1: and two sticks is massive. And if you've got it
Speaker 1: bound up with tape or something, it compresses it and
Speaker 1: it makes the explosive force much more damaging with explosives
Speaker 1: if you compress it. If you put jelly Knight inside
Speaker 1: a package with binding around it, it's the compression that
Speaker 1: makes it a bigger, more dangerous bang. Just drop it
Speaker 1: out in the open space somewhere and it just goes
Speaker 1: off in the middle of a footy ground.
Speaker 2: It's not so bad.
Speaker 1: But when you've got it up on somebody's doorstep, and
Speaker 1: it's got concrete underneath. It's got a wooden door in
Speaker 1: front of it with glass in it. It's got windows nearby,
Speaker 1: and little sort of verandas it becomes surrounded by solid objects,
Speaker 1: and because it's surrounded by solid objects, it reacts against them.
Speaker 1: When the explosion goes off, it creates damage. And what
Speaker 1: happened when it went off. It blew an actual crater
Speaker 1: in the concrete veranda. It blew a crater in the
Speaker 1: concree veranda. It blew the front door of Joey and
Speaker 1: Shirley Hamilton's clean off its hinges and smashed it into matchwood.
Speaker 1: It smashed all their furniture down their hallway. It threw
Speaker 1: their German shepherd dog that had a big German shepherd
Speaker 1: dog that I think probably would have normally slept further
Speaker 1: down the back of the house.
Speaker 2: I reckon.
Speaker 1: The dog has heard somebody on the verandah and trotted
Speaker 1: up to the front door and was at the front
Speaker 1: door when the explosion went off. That dog was thrown
Speaker 1: the length of the hallway and he was knocked out.
Speaker 1: The dog was rendered unconscious. He did survive the length
Speaker 1: of the hallway, is going to be the length of
Speaker 1: three bedrooms with so it is about at least ten meters.
Speaker 1: It's a long way. It smashed everything up. The amazing
Speaker 1: thing is this Joey and Shirley normally slept in the
Speaker 1: front bedroom, which I reckon the police would have known.
Speaker 1: On this night they did not. I don't know why.
Speaker 1: They were pretty cagy on this night. They did not
Speaker 1: sleep in that front bedroom. They slept at the back
Speaker 1: of the house. And they weren't in the front, they believe.
Speaker 1: And I spoke to their next door neighbor today before
Speaker 1: I sat down to do this podcast, I spoke to
Speaker 1: the man who lived next door, who had his own
Speaker 1: story to tell, and he said, he said, I really
Speaker 1: believe that Joey and Shirley believed that if they'd been
Speaker 1: in the bedroom in the front of the house, it
Speaker 1: might have killed them or really badly injured them. He said,
Speaker 1: the amount of glass that was thrown in at force,
Speaker 1: for a start, was dangerous. The brickwork was smashed up
Speaker 1: around the windows and blew in with debris and shrapnel. Essentially,
Speaker 1: he said, it was terrible. And this man that I
Speaker 1: was talking to today, a man called Graham. Graham lived
Speaker 1: next door with his then wife, Barbara and their little
Speaker 1: two year old daughter, Ilsa. I think Graham was a
Speaker 1: teacher and a musician. He was a bit of a guitarist.
Speaker 1: I am a guitarist. I think his wife was. I
Speaker 1: think she's an artistic woman. They lived in Carlton, where
Speaker 1: a lot of those sort of people lived, Musicians, artists,
Speaker 1: those sort of people. They knew Joey and Shirley after
Speaker 1: they'd moved in. They'd sort of met them, and they
Speaker 1: through the party wall and were reasonably friendly with them
Speaker 1: without actually going in to visit much because Joey and
Speaker 1: Shirley realized that because of the police harassment, their neighbors
Speaker 1: could be injured or hurt, and they used to actually
Speaker 1: stay away from their neighbors a bit. Which is interesting
Speaker 1: that couple Barbara and Graham were in bed their little daughter,
Speaker 1: Ilsa just a few minutes before the bomb went off,
Speaker 1: had got out of her crib or her little cot,
Speaker 1: and she'd totted up the hallway to the front of
Speaker 1: the house where her parents were and got into bed
Speaker 1: with them, as little kids often do when they're two
Speaker 1: years old. She crawled up into bed and within minutes
Speaker 1: the bomb's gone off. It's like the end of the world.
Speaker 1: All the glass in their front door smashes, and he's
Speaker 1: thrown straight down the hallway shards of glass. Their windows break.
Speaker 1: In their bedroom and their beds, it is covered with glass. Barbara,
Speaker 1: the mother instinctively pulls the donner over her little baby
Speaker 1: two year old daughter toddler, and then she rolls her
Speaker 1: body over her toddler to protect her. That is her
Speaker 1: memory of it. I rang Barbara last week and she
Speaker 1: told me, and I spoke to her ex husband Graham today,
Speaker 1: and I have been in touch with Ilsa, who was
Speaker 1: then two years old and can't really remember it, but
Speaker 1: they paint a picture of a very frightening thing, Graham said.
Speaker 2: He said, I was totally dazed.
Speaker 1: He said, I stuck my head out the broken window
Speaker 1: and said, God, we've been bombed. And he said, as
Speaker 1: I said it, the guy over the road was walking
Speaker 1: across the road. It was Percy Jones, who of course
Speaker 1: was the great Carlton premiership ruckman, who at that stage
Speaker 1: in seventy eight was a veteran ruckman still playing. I
Speaker 1: think his third and final premiership was the following year
Speaker 1: in seventy nine, giant man nearly two meters tall, looked
Speaker 1: like a wilde beast. Good bloke, a local publican had
Speaker 1: a pub around Carlton knew his way around with police
Speaker 1: and everything. And Percy was instantly out in the street
Speaker 1: and he's walking across the road and Graham calls out
Speaker 1: to him, Oh my god, we've been bombed, and Percy
Speaker 1: says to him, no, you haven't. Have a look next door.
Speaker 1: And Graham turned his head to Shirley and Joey's place
Speaker 1: and saw that it was the one that had been bombed,
Speaker 1: and it was really badly damaged. Branches have been torn
Speaker 1: off the trees. There was iron from corrugated iron have
Speaker 1: been thrown from the verandah across the road and onto
Speaker 1: the road. Brickwork had been shattered and blown in all
Speaker 1: different directions. The garden fence, everything was knocked about. It
Speaker 1: was a real mess and it was quite horrifying. So
Speaker 1: of course lights and sirens turned up the fibergate or whatever.
Speaker 1: Everybody's huddled around the street wearing dressing gowns, saying, oh
Speaker 1: my god, isn't it awful? And clearly this was part
Speaker 1: of this campaign of terror waged against Jerry and Shirley Hamilton,
Speaker 1: and it became clear to everyone. The media realized it,
Speaker 1: everyone realized what.
Speaker 2: It was about.
Speaker 1: The police would say, well, there's no evidence of that.
Speaker 1: Senior police would say, we will investigate this, just as
Speaker 1: we will investigate any criminal act like this. And of
Speaker 1: course it was investigated and they found no evidence of
Speaker 1: police collusion. Amazing really, and so on it went. You
Speaker 1: would think that after that sort of event that could
Speaker 1: have killed people, that they would ease up. Jerry and
Speaker 1: Shirley left Melbourne after that. Their house was essentially half
Speaker 1: destroyed anyway. They went to a place called Warbra, which
Speaker 1: is twenty something kilometers outside Ballarat. It's a long way
Speaker 1: from Melbourne hour and a half maybe, and they got
Speaker 1: a farmhouse out and a property there to live in
Speaker 1: peacefully with their dogs and Da Da Da Shirley could
Speaker 1: play songs and practice them and they live a quiet life.
Speaker 1: They have a car, Joey had a car. It was
Speaker 1: a V eight Aranha. They go to Warboro and they're
Speaker 1: living there and the police immediately know they're there. And
Speaker 1: we know this because there was in fact a policeman
Speaker 1: transferred from Russell Street to Ballarat. He and others went
Speaker 1: out to warbur to the new Hamilton farmhouse and broke
Speaker 1: in the back door and went through the place and
Speaker 1: checked it over. And this happened a couple of times.
Speaker 2: Amazing.
Speaker 1: They would send out half a dozen police to go
Speaker 1: through the place. Half a dozen detectives and senior people
Speaker 1: they were inspectors and senior sergeants and sergeants would turn
Speaker 1: up and raid the farmhouse looking for evidence of criminality.
Speaker 1: Could they find drugs, could they find guns?
Speaker 2: Whatever?
Speaker 1: And when they couldn't find anything, they'd leave the joint
Speaker 1: a hell of a.
Speaker 2: Mess, which is a very bad habit that police had.
Speaker 1: In those days. We know this is true because one
Speaker 1: of them dropped his police diary in the driveway, and
Speaker 1: we've got his name here. It's all or been recorded,
Speaker 1: and that man's diary was left in their driveway and
Speaker 1: that showed that he at least had been there with others.
Speaker 1: One day, joe and Shelley have to come to Melbourne
Speaker 1: for a birthday or some family function. They went down
Speaker 1: a friend's car. A friend picked them up because there's
Speaker 1: something wrong with Joey's car, but always had flat tires
Speaker 1: because the police would put nails for them. That was
Speaker 1: one problem. They'd ordered a local garage guy to bring
Speaker 1: out two tires for the car. Meanwhile, they get a
Speaker 1: ride with a friend to Melbourne to this birthday. When
Speaker 1: they get back next day, they stay in Mold and
Speaker 1: they get back next day the house has been burnt
Speaker 1: down and their car has been burnt to the ground.
Speaker 1: The police, it was without doubt the police had come
Speaker 1: out and rogue police. Of course, they've basically fire bombed
Speaker 1: the house using an accelerant. It was clear to the
Speaker 1: forensic people that went there that an accelerant had been used,
Speaker 1: that petrol or kerosene or something, and the place was
Speaker 1: burnt to the ground. And it was quite a nice house.
Speaker 1: I've seen the photographs of the way it was and
Speaker 1: just the twisted mess of the way it is now,
Speaker 1: exactly like the photos we're seeing from Los Angeles. It
Speaker 1: was like that a fire bomb. That's what happens when
Speaker 1: you use petrol or an accelerant. It goes up in
Speaker 1: the way that that fire recently killed the twenty seven
Speaker 1: year old woman in the Western Suburbs. When an arsonist
Speaker 1: used an accelerant on a house, it can and does
Speaker 1: kill people. It is interesting to wonder about that did
Speaker 1: they think Joey and Shirley were in the house because
Speaker 1: the car was there. The car was there, so it
Speaker 1: looked as if they were home, when in fact they weren't.
Speaker 1: That is a very interesting question. They were certainly home
Speaker 1: when the bomb went off in Station Street, Carlton. They
Speaker 1: might have thought they were home when the fire bombing
Speaker 1: happened at Ballarat. We'll never know for sure. They were
Speaker 1: the two big things that happened. But they were pushed
Speaker 1: and pushed and pushed at every turn. They were harassed
Speaker 1: and finally they were fitted up with a package of
Speaker 1: marijuana and I think a gun as well.
Speaker 2: They were loaded up, as the.
Speaker 1: Saying went in the police force, with marijuana and a
Speaker 1: gun and clearly just planted by the police. He used
Speaker 1: to carry marijuana, heroin and guns in order to do
Speaker 1: this to lock up crooks. And they did it to
Speaker 1: Joey and Shirley at Seaford. I think they'd been down
Speaker 1: at Seafford, maybe Shirley was singing there working there, and
Speaker 1: that's where they're arrested. They took them back to somewhere
Speaker 1: they were staying, and amazingly the police found more incriminating
Speaker 1: evidence and they were charged.
Speaker 2: Joey particularly was charged.
Speaker 1: With being a felon with an illegal weapon and possession
Speaker 1: of illegal drugs and he was due to go to
Speaker 1: court fees or they were due to go to court.
Speaker 1: Poor Debbie, this is Debbie being the young ish she
Speaker 1: was in her twenties by now daughter of Shirley. She
Speaker 1: put up two and a half thousand dollars bail money.
Speaker 1: Now that was a lot of money at a time
Speaker 1: when it was about six months pay for somebody who
Speaker 1: wasn't very well paid.
Speaker 2: It was half a year's wages.
Speaker 1: From ordinary low base rate bank teller, that sort of money.
Speaker 1: It was quite quite a lot of money. Two and
Speaker 1: a half thousand bucks pulled Debbie put up, only to
Speaker 1: find out within a matter of days that her mother
Speaker 1: and her mother's husband had gone on the run. They
Speaker 1: were now Bonnie and Clyde, and they went on the
Speaker 1: run and they hid up around I'm going to say
Speaker 1: near the headwaters of the Murray River, Tom Grogan. They
Speaker 1: must have got onto somebody who had a holiday house
Speaker 1: or a farmhouse and they hid and their whereabouts was
Speaker 1: known to key journalists around the place because they were
Speaker 1: in touch with those sort of people. And Ian Gillespie,
Speaker 1: who was an investigative reporter at that time, who he
Speaker 1: knew the Premier, he knew police in, knew Barry Beach,
Speaker 1: and he knew Joey Hamilton. He was a good reporter
Speaker 1: who knew a lot of people, and he cultivated people,
Speaker 1: and he had a lot of friends on both sides
Speaker 1: of the fence. Gillespie worked out where they were and
Speaker 1: was able to send an intermediary and they sent a
Speaker 1: camera up there and Joey and Shirley basically shot an
Speaker 1: interview of themselves talking to camera about their plight, how
Speaker 1: they had to go on a run to get away
Speaker 1: from these false accusations and from harassment, etc.
Speaker 2: Etc.
Speaker 1: And so their case became a bit of a cause
Speaker 1: celeb It was clear to most people, or to many people,
Speaker 1: that they were the victims of a campaign. Some people
Speaker 1: probably thought, well, they deserve it.
Speaker 2: You know, they're left. He's there against the Vietnam War.
Speaker 2: We hade them, he's a crook.
Speaker 1: Blah blah blah. And you know, there's a grain of
Speaker 1: truth in that as well. But it was a very
Speaker 1: bad thing and increasingly embarrassing for the government. Long story, short,
Speaker 1: deals are done. The government and the pross cuts, and
Speaker 1: everybody realized that it's not a great look to be
Speaker 1: locking people up on such clearly fabricated evidence. Joey has
Speaker 1: already been let out of Pentridge when it's been found
Speaker 1: to be a fabricated case, and so he didn't go
Speaker 1: back in for any length of time. The jury and
Speaker 1: Shirley Hamilton story went on because there was a change
Speaker 1: of government in Victoria to the Cain Labor government in
Speaker 1: I'm thinking nineteen eighty two. And John Cain was a
Speaker 1: very decent and honest man, as had his predecessor, decaym
Speaker 1: had been that as well, but John Cain was of
Speaker 1: the highest probity, and I think it worried John Cain
Speaker 1: that the police and others had connived to do such
Speaker 1: cynical and terrible things to people, and Joey and others,
Speaker 1: and a secret agreement was made. Joey Hamilton sued for
Speaker 1: wrongful imprisonment. Interestingly, a man who was locked up for
Speaker 1: one night in Victoria at that time wrongly. He shouldn't
Speaker 1: have been locked up. It was complete balls up. He
Speaker 1: was an innocent person. He was given two thousand dollars
Speaker 1: compensation for one night in the cells. Now if you
Speaker 1: worked out a pro rata two thousand dollars. Newspapers editorialized
Speaker 1: about this.
Speaker 2: They said, this is a.
Speaker 1: Big problem for the government. Joe Blocks gets two thousand
Speaker 1: dollars for one night in the cells, and rightly so
Speaker 1: if you multiply that by three and a half years
Speaker 1: for Joey Hamilton, it's worth nearly two million.
Speaker 2: Bucks or something. It was a lot.
Speaker 1: So Joey Hamilton demands a lot of money, one point
Speaker 1: something million. And in the end the Cane government made
Speaker 1: a secret deal. I haggled it down. He didn't get
Speaker 1: a full on pardon, he didn't get a public apology,
Speaker 1: but what he got was an ex grasher payment of
Speaker 1: about twenty six thousand bucks, which it's not much compared
Speaker 1: to the million bucks, but it was a couple of
Speaker 1: years salary. At that time, it was a significant amount.
Speaker 2: You could buy a very cheap.
Speaker 1: House around Melbourne in those days, in the inner suburbs,
Speaker 1: the lesser inner suburbs in that era, around Maidstone Footscray,
Speaker 1: those places, you could have bought a house for twenty
Speaker 1: six grand. It wasn't nothing. And this became a cause
Speaker 1: celeb because it was given huge publicity. You know, ex
Speaker 1: Krim gets twenty six thousand in secret payment. Honest John
Speaker 1: Kain embarrassed by secret deal. Poor old John Kain, who
Speaker 1: had just been trying to do the right thing and
Speaker 1: I think sort of keep everybody a bit happy. He
Speaker 1: didn't want to make an enemy of the police force,
Speaker 1: because no government wants to, but he also wanted to
Speaker 1: do the right thing to some extent by and a
Speaker 1: woman who had been greatly wronged. And it didn't please anybody.
Speaker 1: In the end, Joey Hamilton did not get the amount
Speaker 1: of money.
Speaker 2: That he thought he deserved.
Speaker 1: The police force were outraged at this pandering to you know,
Speaker 1: the left and the criminal classes. The right wing of
Speaker 1: politics agreed with the police, of course, and on it went,
Speaker 1: and so it became an embarrassing episode for the Kane government,
Speaker 1: which faded into insignificance over time, as there were a
Speaker 1: lot of other problems for that government over the following years,
Speaker 1: big financial problems. That is probably the short version of
Speaker 1: the Ballad of Joey and Shirley Hamilton. I have to
Speaker 1: say that their neighbor, Graham, the teacher who played guitar,
Speaker 1: told me today that he used to sit in the
Speaker 1: backyard his backyard, which was just a few feet from
Speaker 1: their backyard, and play Dylan songs. He was pretty good
Speaker 1: at it, sing Girl from the North Country and whatever.
Speaker 1: And Joey was a Dylan fan. He loved Dylan songs.
Speaker 1: And he said, sometimes Joey would throw a little bag
Speaker 1: over the fence with a little bit of dope in it,
Speaker 1: a joint, and so can you play me another Dylan song?
Speaker 1: And so Graham would play another Dylan song. And in fact,
Speaker 1: after the bombing, Graham wrote a song, he wrote literally
Speaker 1: the song called the Ballad of Shirley and Joey, and
Speaker 1: he played it to them and they were very touched.
Speaker 1: PostScript to the story is that Joey and Shirley, a
Speaker 1: contrary to what you might think, fifteen years apart, him
Speaker 1: a crook, so on and so on, they stayed together
Speaker 1: more or less the rest of their lives. I think
Speaker 1: they had their ups and downs and little dramas as
Speaker 1: you might expect. They're both probably a bit volatile. But
Speaker 1: when Shirley Jacobs died in November twenty fifteen, not that
Speaker 1: many years ago, nine years ago, really, she was a
Speaker 1: very old woman dying in a nursing home in the
Speaker 1: Inner North and who would turn up every day to
Speaker 1: visit her and hold her hand and talk to her.
Speaker 1: But a skinny, little old former crook called Joey Hamilton
Speaker 1: her ever loving husband. And that is the end of
Speaker 1: the story of Joey and Shirley, A sort of a
Speaker 1: rough and ready love story with bullets and bombs attached.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening. Life and Crimes is a Sunday Herald's
Speaker 1: Sun 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 newspot casts sold at news dot
Speaker 1: com dot au. That is all one word news podcasts sold.
Speaker 1: And if you want further information about this episode, links
Speaker 1: are in the description.