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Speaker 1: Underneath that gendrified exterior there still beats a scally wag

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Speaker 1: heart and I have to say that Saint Kilda and

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Speaker 1: the general area around it still boasts its share of skulldugery,

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Speaker 1: particularly drug dealers. They were the nightclub kings and they

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Speaker 1: really look forward more I think, to the nightclubs on

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Speaker 1: Saturday nights than playing football on Saturday afternoon. I'm Andrew Rule.

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Speaker 1: This is life and crimes. Saint Kilda has always been

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Speaker 1: the go to suburb in Melbourne to get drugs and

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Speaker 1: to get illicit sex. It's been that way certainly since

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Speaker 1: World War II, when I imagine a lot of soldiers

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Speaker 1: on leave, including American soldiers, were racing around Melbourne looking

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Speaker 1: to have a good time before they went away to

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Speaker 1: the battlefields and had a very bad time. And so

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Speaker 1: our bayside suburb has a very racy atmosphere to this day,

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Speaker 1: which has been eroded and diffused a lot by rising

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Speaker 1: real estate prices, which means that a lot of places

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Speaker 1: down there have been gentrified and a lot of places

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Speaker 1: used to be massage parlors or cheap and nasty boarding

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Speaker 1: houses have been fixed up and a lot of fashionable

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Speaker 1: people now live there. However, underneath that gentrified exterior there

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Speaker 1: still beats a scaley wag heart. And I have to

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Speaker 1: say that sin Kilda and the general area around it

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Speaker 1: still boasts its share of skulldugery, particularly drug dealers. Now

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Speaker 1: there are plenty of drug dealers in the West and

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Speaker 1: in the North, but on the bayside part of Melbourne,

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Speaker 1: sin Kilda is the hub even to this day, and

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Speaker 1: there is living in Saint Kilda a man who we

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Speaker 1: will name. His name is Ian Lesser. Lesser as in

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Speaker 1: Greater Ian Lesser has been a longtime resident of Saint Kilda.

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Speaker 1: In fact, it seems to me that he has been

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Speaker 1: dealing drugs around Saint Kilda for the best part of

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Speaker 1: fifty years, because he was there in the seventies, and

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Speaker 1: he's there in the eighties and the nineties and so

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Speaker 1: on all the way through. Except ladies and gentlemen. When

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Speaker 1: he had to take a big holiday at Her Majesty's

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Speaker 1: pleasure in one of Her Majesty's gray bar motels. He

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Speaker 1: would do his few years in Pentridge and other places

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Speaker 1: when he got sprung, and then he come out again

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Speaker 1: and he'd set up business and a way he would go. Now,

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Speaker 1: the interesting thing about this Ian Lesser is that over

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Speaker 1: recent years, and by that I mean most of this century,

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Speaker 1: most of the last twenty years, he has led a

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Speaker 1: remarkably peaceful life down there. He's not hard to find.

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Speaker 1: He's got a very well exposed corner position between Corfield

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Speaker 1: and St Kilda. It's prime real estate in any business, really,

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Speaker 1: but particularly in the drug slinging caper. The closest bus

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Speaker 1: stop is only a punk kick away Rippingley station just

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Speaker 1: to walk down Glenyrah Road. Those who mix drugs and

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Speaker 1: driving can speed into the street next to his house,

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Speaker 1: which is called Blanche Street. They can hit the brakes,

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Speaker 1: jump out and do the business at his back gate

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Speaker 1: in a few seconds. And when I was down there

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Speaker 1: relatively recently towards the end of winter, I noticed a

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Speaker 1: young fellow jump out and go to the back gate

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Speaker 1: and do a transaction of some sort very rapidly, and

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Speaker 1: then hop back in his car and drive away. And

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Speaker 1: if you sit around that neighborhood and have a bit

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Speaker 1: of a look, as some people do, you will notice

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Speaker 1: there's always a little bit of activity. Now, some of

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Speaker 1: the neighbors up and down that district are not very

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Speaker 1: happy about this. They feel that ian lesser, although he

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Speaker 1: is seen by some members of the local football club

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Speaker 1: that would be the amateur footy club over there. They

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Speaker 1: see him as a sort of a club patron, a

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Speaker 1: bit of a club benefactor, a guy who turns up

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Speaker 1: and helps at the footy club. I suspect tips some

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Speaker 1: money into the footy club to help recruit players and

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Speaker 1: all that sort of thing. And interestingly, very interestingly, the

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Speaker 1: amateur Footy Club has always been able to attract some pretty.

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Speaker 2: High profile players who have slipped off the radar at

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Speaker 2: the AFL VFL level and have gone down market to

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Speaker 2: play in the amateurs.

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Speaker 1: And some of these guys they could get quite good

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Speaker 1: money if they went and played up the bush. They

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Speaker 1: could go to you know, let's say LeAnn Gather or

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Speaker 1: Maffra or wherever it might be, Castlemaine somewhere, and they

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Speaker 1: could get possibly four figures to play saturdays up there

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Speaker 1: in the bush, you know, a decent mortgage payment really,

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Speaker 1: But some of them choose not to do that. Some

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Speaker 1: of them choose to play local. It's closer to home.

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Speaker 1: They can get a little bit of cash from the club.

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Speaker 1: The unless a local drug dealer gets to be a

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Speaker 1: big man at the local footy club where all sorts

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Speaker 1: of interesting people play, including young people from around the

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Speaker 1: area and your former school boy footballers and schoolgirl netballers presumably.

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Speaker 1: And this is a very interesting and thorny issue for

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Speaker 1: the parents of those kids, because this blog is helping

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Speaker 1: the club by recruiting players and financial support. Just thought

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Speaker 1: we'd put that out there, front and square. Now, So

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Speaker 1: what you say, there's a drug dealer and some and killder, Well, yes,

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Speaker 1: but this one seems to go under the radar. It's

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Speaker 1: just amazing. We hear at the Herald Sun. We have

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Speaker 1: images of identical number plates on different cars parked outside

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Speaker 1: his house on different dates. So one set of plates

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Speaker 1: beginning with the letters let's say like bgo, like Bendigo bgo.

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Speaker 1: One day it's on a black Beamer four doors a DAN.

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Speaker 1: Next day you come back, the same number plate is

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Speaker 1: on a two door convertible. Amazing, they just jumped from

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Speaker 1: carter car. So recently we had photographers and others with

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Speaker 1: phones that take photographs dodging around taking pictures and we

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Speaker 1: got a gray BMW suv. It was photographed next to

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Speaker 1: the house with a very badly attached number plate. Now

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Speaker 1: this is quite a smart car. In other respects, it

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Speaker 1: looks pretty kosher, pretty straight, pretty expensive. But the number plate,

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Speaker 1: which started with the letters SFS. That number plate was

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Speaker 1: all crooked and skew, as if somebody had just buned

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Speaker 1: it on with one screw in one corner. It was very,

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Speaker 1: very tatty and makeshift. Now no wonder it's tatty and

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Speaker 1: makeshift because that number had belonged to a red Mazda

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Speaker 1: station Wagon until last year. So again number plates that

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Speaker 1: jumped from one car to another, and not even sticking

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Speaker 1: to BMW's. They jumped from red Masters to gray Beamers.

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Speaker 1: So it's open slather now. The car capers aside, the

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Speaker 1: drug sales have been very solid. Now. I can't vouch

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Speaker 1: for what's happened in the last month or so since

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Speaker 1: we expose some of this in the Sunday Herald Sun.

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Speaker 1: But before that, back in late winter, we noticed that

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Speaker 1: one buyer doing a pick up at the back gate

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Speaker 1: is a senior ELM and a footy club player, another

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Speaker 1: retired player who's the brother of an AFL figure. He

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Speaker 1: gets around the place around that whole district, up and

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Speaker 1: down and around about on an e scooter to work

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Speaker 1: his patch more efficiently. Now that's showing good modern marketing skills.

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Speaker 1: Instead of walking or taking the tram, he's got an

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Speaker 1: E scooter and then he can ping along. Willy quickly

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Speaker 1: answer a phone, say I'll meet you down on the

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Speaker 1: ex corner. Next thing, he's there on his EA scooter,

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Speaker 1: hands over the gear and picks up the cash way

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Speaker 1: he goes. Providing he's got enough HEAs scooters with enough batteries,

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Speaker 1: he can just keep going like energize a bunny. One

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Speaker 1: wise head who's bought and sold a lot of goods

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Speaker 1: in his life have said to me, it's like a

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Speaker 1: seven to eleven store. This blog's a hard case. And

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Speaker 1: he's seen a lot of things in a lot of places,

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Speaker 1: but he says he's rarely seen more open and more

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Speaker 1: frequent sales than in the Elstonwick emporium of I Unlesser.

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Speaker 1: He says, it's bizarre how he can keep dealing like

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Speaker 1: that and he's still standing. He's sort of the last

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Speaker 1: of the Murricans, says my source, a source I know

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Speaker 1: very well who knows a lot of the people around

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Speaker 1: the streets of St Kilda and has known them for

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Speaker 1: many years, which hasn't helped him a lot, because it

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Speaker 1: has been a drug addict of note, and his addictions

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Speaker 1: almost cost him his life and put him in hospital

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Speaker 1: and in jail. So he's had a rough spin from

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Speaker 1: the drugs and he's now well away from them, we hope.

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Speaker 1: But he still understands exactly what he's looking at when

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Speaker 1: he drives down those streets and takes a look. Now,

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Speaker 1: a lot of the local people are unhappy because they

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Speaker 1: see these things happening. It's obvious some of these people

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Speaker 1: are you know, they live there, They've got kids, others,

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Speaker 1: they've got shops, others, whatever, they're good citizens. They live

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Speaker 1: in what is, in many ways a very pleasant part

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Speaker 1: of Melbourne. It's close to the Bay, it's close to

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Speaker 1: groovy shops and coffee shops and all that sort of

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Speaker 1: good stuff. And who wouldn't want to be there. But

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Speaker 1: they say that they're tired of reporting around the clock

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Speaker 1: activity at the side gate of Ianless's house. A while ago,

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Speaker 1: this is last summer. In fact, they thought that their

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Speaker 1: prayers had been answered. They thought, Bilki, there's a group

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Speaker 1: of alleged council workers who are wearing high vis vests.

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Speaker 1: And suddenly this group of alleged council workers produced guns

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Speaker 1: and badgers, and all the locals are going, you're beauty,

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Speaker 1: knock off the drug dealer on the corner. Cops everywhere

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Speaker 1: running everywhere, good news. They're all texting each other and

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Speaker 1: wringing each other and high fiving, And no, they were wrong.

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Speaker 1: The police were there to raid a cannabis grow house,

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Speaker 1: which happened to be close by. They didn't knock off

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Speaker 1: Ian Less's corner emporium. They knocked off a growhouse. And

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Speaker 1: as the officers lugged out dozens of plants to load

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Speaker 1: into a van, locals realized what they think is the truth.

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Speaker 1: Now it may not be. It might be just perceptions.

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Speaker 1: But the locals' perception is that some crooks get raided

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Speaker 1: and some don't, some crooks get knocked off, and some

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Speaker 1: are untouchable. Now that might be wrong. Maybe the police

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Speaker 1: are playing a long game with a lesser. Maybe Ian

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Speaker 1: Lesser is useful to the place. He's a wise old hound.

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Speaker 1: He knows his way around the underworld. He knows his

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Speaker 1: way around the drug world. He knows probably a lot

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Speaker 1: of the thieves and receivers and all those people in

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Speaker 1: that seedy underbelly and perhaps the police like to have

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Speaker 1: him as eyes and ears so that they can keep

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Speaker 1: track of various other bad guys around their district. That

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Speaker 1: is quite possible. We wouldn't like to say, you know,

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Speaker 1: is he a police informert don't know? Or is he

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Speaker 1: just lucky? Who would know? It's a very tricky subject

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Speaker 1: in Robert Lesser, that is his name. He hasn't always

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Speaker 1: been teflon coated, as I've suggested before. In the past,

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Speaker 1: he's had his share of troubles. In nineteen eighty eight,

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Speaker 1: he was sentenced to a minimum of seven years for

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Speaker 1: importing illegal drugs. In nineteen ninety six, which is what

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Speaker 1: eight years later, he was charged with trafficking heroine and

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Speaker 1: admitted several prior convictions. But with age comes cunning. It

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Speaker 1: seems that the last time Ian Lesser was in trouble

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Speaker 1: was in twenty ten when he and his brother Mark,

196
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Speaker 1: an alleged part time actor nicknamed Porky by his mates,

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Speaker 1: they are arrest of the possession of one hundred and

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Speaker 1: eighty nine grams of heroin. Now, this heroin was found

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Speaker 1: in a sock. Good tip this, if you want to

200
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Speaker 1: keep heroin around the place, put it in a sock,

201
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Speaker 1: hang it in a tree in somebody else's garden. He

202
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Speaker 1: was found in a sock in an associate's garden, which

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Speaker 1: is the story in itself. It's possible, listeners that the

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Speaker 1: garden owner wasn't happy about his property being used to

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Speaker 1: stook the gear, as the crooks say, and maybe the

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Speaker 1: owner sold out Ian Lesser to avoid being charged himself.

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Speaker 1: Hard to know now. Ian Lesser is now seventy two,

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Speaker 1: which means he's a pretty big age for someone in

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Speaker 1: his profession and a survivor. Since that last serious brush

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Speaker 1: with the law in twenty ten, he's been flourishing and

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Speaker 1: as we pointed out, he seems to have a choice

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Speaker 1: a fleet of German cars which are often parked in

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Speaker 1: Blant Street near an old white van, but his usual

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Speaker 1: work car, or at least it was a few weeks

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Speaker 1: ago when I last looked over, there is a brand

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Speaker 1: new black Toyota high lux utility which has often seen

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Speaker 1: at handy drop points anywhere between his house in Elstonwick

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Speaker 1: there and Fitzroy Street and the amateur footy club over

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Speaker 1: there in AFL Circles, which is not this, but in

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Speaker 1: AFL Circles, the professionals and Kilda footy club, The Saints

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Speaker 1: was once always seen as the competition's nightclub team. I

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Speaker 1: know when I cover AFL football back in the olden days,

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Speaker 1: I often had to cover some Kilder because they were

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Speaker 1: the cellar dwellers. They were the sort of one of

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Speaker 1: the worst performed teams, but they were by far the

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Speaker 1: most fun. They were glamorous, many blonde players, and many

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Speaker 1: of them were suntanned, and they were the nightclub Kings,

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Speaker 1: and they really look forward more I think to the

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Speaker 1: nightclubs on Saturday nights than playing football on Saturday afternoon.

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Speaker 1: But those days have changed and the Saints are now

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Speaker 1: a very serious professional modern football team. One of the

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Speaker 1: amateur club star players a few years back was a

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Speaker 1: dashing and pugnacious young fellow called Christian Middleton. That was

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Speaker 1: the name he used when he played for that team.

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Speaker 1: Now his original surname might be more familiar to our listeners.

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Speaker 1: His original surname, probably his real surname, not one on

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Speaker 1: his birthday, is Moran, and he has nothing to do

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Speaker 1: with the people that make leather couches. He is, in

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Speaker 1: fact the son of the murdered gangster Jason Moran and

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Speaker 1: his wife Trish, who of course is the daughter of

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Speaker 1: the vanished patron docker Les Kane, who vanished way back

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Speaker 1: in about nineteen seventy eight from an apartment in Monturna,

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Speaker 1: which is one of the big chapters in the story

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Speaker 1: of untold violence in Melbourne. In the past, young Christian

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Speaker 1: Middleton alias Moran would play and then play pretty well

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Speaker 1: and colorful Carlton identities such as mic Gatto and his

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Speaker 1: mates would occasionally come over to that side of town

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Speaker 1: away from Carlton to watch their dead mate's son play.

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Speaker 1: Funny thing that the Underworld War, the one we call

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Speaker 1: the underbelly War or the gang War, the one that

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Speaker 1: ended so many lives now almost twenty years ago, started

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Speaker 1: as a fight between a new boy called Carl Williams

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Speaker 1: and the old school Moran klan, who were the sort

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Speaker 1: of Carlton Crewe guys, and they were well established crooks

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Speaker 1: the Morans. Interestingly, Ian Lesser, the sort of man for

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Speaker 1: all seasons drug dealer, is the great survivor. He clearly

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Speaker 1: has a talent for useful connections, as one of his

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Speaker 1: players said to me, And this young man is now

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Speaker 1: a very respected professional in his field. He once worked

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Speaker 1: in newspapers briefly, and he is by way of being

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Speaker 1: sort of newspaper royalty. But these days he calls himself

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Speaker 1: a diplomat, which is interesting. He may well be working

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Speaker 1: for one of the Australia's security services, or goodness knows what.

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Speaker 1: He might just work for the gas and fuel company

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Speaker 1: for all I know. But he played football for the Amateurs,

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Speaker 1: a big strapping fellow, and he was a bit of

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Speaker 1: an admira of Christian Middleton's game. He said he was

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Speaker 1: a good tough player. And interestingly, on the issue of

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Speaker 1: Ian Lesser, he said, well, I know that Ian is

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Speaker 1: a bit of a crim I know that, and I

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Speaker 1: always knew that, and my father knew that too. But

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Speaker 1: he said, even if he got into trouble now and

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Speaker 1: went to jail or something, I would still if I

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Speaker 1: saw him around, I'd shake his hand and talk to him.

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Speaker 1: Because the flip side of Ian Lesser is that he

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Speaker 1: he's a rough diamond and he's done bad stuff, but

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Speaker 1: he does actually look after kids that come and play

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Speaker 1: footy there, and he gives kids that haven't got much

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Speaker 1: of a start in the world a bit of a start.

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Speaker 1: He'll buy them the boots and he'll buy them the

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Speaker 1: jumpers and he sort of gives them a bit of

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Speaker 1: a push along and if they're any good, they get

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Speaker 1: matched bays and all that sort of thing. And so

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Speaker 1: he said. The flip side of Ian Lesser is that

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Speaker 1: you know, it's the bad guy who does a bit

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Speaker 1: of a robin hood. He does some good work, which

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Speaker 1: I found an intriguing proposition, but I guess it's fair

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Speaker 1: enough because most people, really, their behavior and their morals

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Speaker 1: are not so much black and white as shades of gray.

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Speaker 1: And when it comes to shades of gray, Sint Kilda

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Speaker 1: has always had at least fifty of them. Thanks for listening.

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Speaker 3: Life and Crimes is a Sunday Herald Sun production for

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Speaker 3: true crime Australia. Our producer is Johnty Burton. For my columns,

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Speaker 3: features and more, go to Heroldsun dot com dot AU,

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Speaker 3: forward slash Andrew Rule one word. For advertising inquiries, go

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Speaker 3: to news Podcasts sold at news dot co a you

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