Speaker 1: The Green Lambot Michael Sullivan at the wheel. They waved
Speaker 1: to each other and it's all good. And that's the
Speaker 1: last time he sees the Lambo. And that's the end
Speaker 1: of that, you would think, But unbeknown to Joe Tranto,
Speaker 1: a lot is going on in Michael Sullivan's life. He
Speaker 1: met the drug carrying guy at the maternity hospital in
Speaker 1: Oast Melbourne, knowing that the police are going to be
Speaker 1: very reluctant to start a shooting war in a maternity hospital.
Speaker 1: I'm Andrew Rule. This is life and Crimes. We often
Speaker 1: delve back into history for stories and when came out
Speaker 1: of the blue. Recently, I got a message from a
Speaker 1: listener called Joe Taranto, and Joe shared a story with
Speaker 1: me that I thought was well worth sharing with everybody.
Speaker 1: And it goes something like this, Joe Taranto, we must
Speaker 1: remember he's a respectable member of the community. He's a
Speaker 1: hard working, white collar guy who's never done a wrong
Speaker 1: thing in his life. So let's just get that straight
Speaker 1: right at the start. But Joe did have a brush
Speaker 1: with criminality way back, and this is what happened. Joe
Speaker 1: was a hard working fellow. He worked for the de
Speaker 1: luxe paint company. The headquarters were in Mulgrave may well
Speaker 1: still be in Mulgrave for a liner, unless it's now
Speaker 1: made in China. And he had a good job there,
Speaker 1: sort of in the computer area, and he obviously earned
Speaker 1: pretty handy money even though he was relatively young. He
Speaker 1: was turning thirty and he was in the process of
Speaker 1: courting a young woman at work there hadn't yet got
Speaker 1: married and had children, and he thought, I'm turning thirty,
Speaker 1: I want to buy an exotic Italian car. He knew
Speaker 1: that his father wouldn't approve of such a thing, and
Speaker 1: Joe thought, I want to buy something like a Lamborghini.
Speaker 1: So he pulls together some money and he looks around
Speaker 1: the marketplace at the time, and we're tooking nineteen seventy seven.
Speaker 1: It's a fairwhile ago. Joe's now grandfather. Back then he wasn't,
Speaker 1: and he decides to buy a Lamborghini Urrako, which was
Speaker 1: one of those really nifty, sharp little Lambos made at
Speaker 1: that time. Mid engine motor two seater, goes as if
Speaker 1: it's a cutcat and corners as if it's on rails,
Speaker 1: an astonishing vehicle for that era. When Holden's and Fords
Speaker 1: were fairly agricultural. It was a revelation to driver car
Speaker 1: like that. It was just a few years old when
Speaker 1: he bought it, very low mileage, probably a seventy three model.
Speaker 1: I think they came out and he is delighted with it.
Speaker 1: It's a vivid green Lamborghini. He's just this stage. He's
Speaker 1: still living down on the Bay side somewhere, and he
Speaker 1: drives it around a cash and cleans it and it's beautiful,
Speaker 1: and he's going around with the girl that would later
Speaker 1: become his wife. I think her name was Jennifer. And
Speaker 1: it's really really good fun having this Lamborghini. But of
Speaker 1: course they get married and in rapid order they buy
Speaker 1: a big new house with a big new mortgage down
Speaker 1: at Mentaliza, and I think his bride, Jennifer, points out
Speaker 1: that perhaps it would be more sensible to invest the
Speaker 1: money tied up in the Lamborghini, which is seventeen thousand
Speaker 1: dollars a fair bit of money in that era. Let
Speaker 1: me say, I know that because my first year of
Speaker 1: work in seventy five, I earned about three thousand, so
Speaker 1: it was quite a bit of money for a young
Speaker 1: person in those days. He agrees, says heah, right, I'll
Speaker 1: sell my Lambeau while it's still worth something. And one
Speaker 1: of the reasons he agrees is that he knows it
Speaker 1: still has some value. He knows that it's probably gone
Speaker 1: up a bit in the market because they're rare, they're
Speaker 1: a collector's item. He's kept it in perfect order. In fact,
Speaker 1: he took it back to be serviced by the guy
Speaker 1: that had sold it to him, this European car dealer guy,
Speaker 1: and it was really good. So he advertises it in
Speaker 1: a large newspaper that ran classified advertisements. You will know
Speaker 1: which one, and it was in the for sale columns,
Speaker 1: but it was probably the only Lamborghini Uraco for sale
Speaker 1: that work. He gets one bite. He gets one telephone
Speaker 1: call from a prospective buyer, and the guy on the
Speaker 1: other end of the line, friendly, bright sort of blog says,
Speaker 1: I'll come down and look at your Lamboat, and they
Speaker 1: make an agreement to have a look at it. The
Speaker 1: ad was on Saturday, I think the next day or Monday,
Speaker 1: the guy turns up to look at the Lamboat and
Speaker 1: this fellow turns up down at Joe's house. He turns
Speaker 1: up in a big black American car, which was unusual
Speaker 1: you know it's not not everyone was driving those. And
Speaker 1: he's a youngish guy, guy that's even younger than Joe.
Speaker 1: And he's really well dressed. He's got an athletic, good
Speaker 1: looking guy. He's beautifully dressed. Immaculate was the word Joe used.
Speaker 1: Quite an impressive fellow, and he's very easy to meet.
Speaker 1: He's quite charming, good conversationalist. Chat chat chat, nice line
Speaker 1: of chat. And he looks over the lambeau said, oh look,
Speaker 1: I love the look of it. I'm pretty keen on it.
Speaker 1: Can I bring my wife back, you know, whenever this
Speaker 1: week and have another look and if it's okay, we'll
Speaker 1: get it checked over. And it's okay, I'll buy it now.
Speaker 1: That is the sort of conversation you often have with
Speaker 1: tire kickts, people who come and look at good cars
Speaker 1: and then go away and they're never going to buy them.
Speaker 1: They're just looking at cars for basically a way to
Speaker 1: kill a lazy weekend. But anyway, this fellow turns up again.
Speaker 1: He turns up driving an Alpha Romeo a few days later,
Speaker 1: and with him are two very beautiful young women of
Speaker 1: what Joe took to be Spanish origin, are in fact
Speaker 1: probably both the Colombians, I think South Americans, and one
Speaker 1: he thinks was the buyer's wife, and the other he
Speaker 1: thinks was the bias wife's sister, so wife and sister
Speaker 1: in law. The buyer's name, or the name he gave
Speaker 1: him was Michael Sullivan, which turns out to be his
Speaker 1: real name. Astoundingly, it was his real name, because as
Speaker 1: it turns out, he was quite a colorful character. And
Speaker 1: Michael Sullivan says, yep, love it. They had a drive.
Speaker 1: They all four got in the car. You know, there's
Speaker 1: a little dickie set in the back, and they managed
Speaker 1: to fit in and went for a drive. Yeah, it's great,
Speaker 1: it's wonderful. We'll just get it checked over by the
Speaker 1: mechanic guy. And in fact, Sullivan said, we can take
Speaker 1: it to your bloke. It's fine because he services it.
Speaker 1: He can do it, and if it's got a I'll
Speaker 1: buy it. So Joe is asking twenty two thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: Now that's five more than he pay for him because
Speaker 1: he thinks it's gone up a bit, And Michael Sullivan,
Speaker 1: and this is intriguing, did not try at all to haggle,
Speaker 1: even though it was really a bit over the top.
Speaker 1: The car was probably worth twenty and Michael Sullivan didn't
Speaker 1: haggle one bit. He just handed over one thousand dollars
Speaker 1: in cash and said, I'll pay you twenty one with
Speaker 1: a bank check. And that's what happened. He pays with
Speaker 1: a bank check. Bank check is bank and he picks
Speaker 1: up the Lambeau anyway he goes, and that's that. You
Speaker 1: would think this is just before Christmas of nineteen eighty,
Speaker 1: and it's probably five weeks before Christmas nineteen and eighty
Speaker 1: when this transaction happens. On Christmas Day of nineteen eighty,
Speaker 1: our man Joe Taranto has driven his uncle and aunt
Speaker 1: home to somewhere on the other side out of town
Speaker 1: Mooney Ponds, I think, because they'd had Christmas dinner and
Speaker 1: couldn't drive whatever, And he drove them home. And he
Speaker 1: is driving down the Pan Highway on his way back
Speaker 1: to Mounteliza and he sees the Green Lambo, and the
Speaker 1: Green Lambot's got Michael Sullivan at the wheel. They wave
Speaker 1: to each other and it's all good, and they drive
Speaker 1: beside each other for a while and that's the last
Speaker 1: time he sees the Lambo and that's the end of
Speaker 1: that you would think, but unbeknown to Joe Tranto, a
Speaker 1: lot is going on in Michael Sullivan's life. Michael Sullivan
Speaker 1: is a very interesting character. We already know he's young
Speaker 1: and immaculately dressed and buying expensive cars. In this conversation,
Speaker 1: already we've met the fact that he's driving a big
Speaker 1: black American car and Alfa Romeo and he's just support
Speaker 1: a Lamborghini and this guy's in his twenties. In conversation,
Speaker 1: he has told Joe Taranto that he's owned thirty four
Speaker 1: cars so far in his life, which is a lot
Speaker 1: if you've twenty six or something, and means he's turning
Speaker 1: them over very rapidly, several per year. Expensive cars. Now,
Speaker 1: that is a sign of someone with a lot of
Speaker 1: disposable income, and that is exactly what Michael Sullivan was.
Speaker 1: And what Joe Taranto doesn't know is that Michael Sullivan
Speaker 1: is the let's say, business partner of a scullywag called
Speaker 1: David McMillan, whose name we have mentioned in these podcasts before.
Speaker 1: McMillan the villain, which he very much was. And David
Speaker 1: McMillan was a very smooth character, very clever guy. He
Speaker 1: was a graduate. In fact, he was expelled from Corfield
Speaker 1: Grammar Corfield Grammar School which is the school that produced
Speaker 1: Nick Cave the musician, and Christopher Scase, the disgraced businessman,
Speaker 1: and the late Lord Mayor and big man around Melbourne,
Speaker 1: Ron Walker. All these people went to Corawfield gramm and
Speaker 1: they were pretty sharp operator some of them, and of
Speaker 1: them probably McMillan was the most sharp and most villainous.
Speaker 1: And McMillan was a very naughty lad. He was charming,
Speaker 1: he was articulate, he had all the social graces, but
Speaker 1: he was a scoundrel and he would rather turn a
Speaker 1: dishonest dollar than earn two honors dollars. He was that
Speaker 1: sort of bloke in just nature of the beast. He'd
Speaker 1: actually been born in England of Australian parents. His dad
Speaker 1: had been an officer in a I think he was
Speaker 1: an Air Force office anyway, as an officer in World
Speaker 1: War Two, and was quite a distinguished former soldier or
Speaker 1: a former military person who got a job after the
Speaker 1: war in the I think early BBC television days. McMillan's
Speaker 1: mother was quite a well known beauty. She was a
Speaker 1: beautiful woman and talented and clever and all that sort
Speaker 1: of stuff. And he'd been born in London, of life there,
Speaker 1: and then later on his beautiful mother had decided to
Speaker 1: go back to Australia, to Melbourne, and she took him
Speaker 1: and his sister, young David and his sister Debbie, and
Speaker 1: she had a series of relationships. But she was married
Speaker 1: at some stage to a fellow called Nashed, and they
Speaker 1: had a boy called Simon who became the very very
Speaker 1: fine journalist Simon Nash, who used to work at the
Speaker 1: Age newspaper and at the ABC and became a very
Speaker 1: respected and fine documentary maker in Australia. And so this
Speaker 1: is the pedigree of this David McMillan, who is the
Speaker 1: business partner, let us say, of Michael Sullivan, the man
Speaker 1: who's bought the Lamborghini. And I hear you think, well,
Speaker 1: why is he telling us all this? Well you need
Speaker 1: to know the setup. The setup is that McMillan and
Speaker 1: Sullivan and a couple of very beautiful young women are
Speaker 1: living some of the time in a house down near
Speaker 1: the Bay. I'm going to say Sandringham, one of those
Speaker 1: sort of places, perhaps one in Brighton, perhaps another one
Speaker 1: in South Thierra, they might have had one in Carlton.
Speaker 1: They had a range of properties around the place, and
Speaker 1: they would turn up here or there or the other one,
Speaker 1: and they would always be driving these exotic cars, and
Speaker 1: every few weeks would be a different car, you know.
Speaker 1: And at one of these addresses, the old chap next door,
Speaker 1: former policeman, retired policeman, he starts to take a bit
Speaker 1: of notice. He thinks these people are young, and they're beautiful,
Speaker 1: and they're obviously very wealthy because they do nothing but
Speaker 1: get up at ten o'clock in the morning and by
Speaker 1: go shopping and buy lots of stuff. And they're always
Speaker 1: driving these exotic cars. And there is no sign of
Speaker 1: a day job. It doesn't look as it's any of
Speaker 1: them work. They don't send to go anywhere except to
Speaker 1: go shopping or traveling or having holidays. That is very so,
Speaker 1: being a nosy old ex copper, he puts one a
Speaker 1: month together and gets eleven and he works out that
Speaker 1: probably they're up to no good, that they've got an
Speaker 1: illicit form of income, and indeed they did have. And
Speaker 1: he started to observe them and note registration numbers, comings
Speaker 1: and goings and all the rest of it, and he
Speaker 1: tells he's very good friends in the police force, these
Speaker 1: former colleagues, and they are getting a bit keen on
Speaker 1: the idea of the police are getting pretty keen on
Speaker 1: the idea of detecting drug dealers, especially high end drug dealers,
Speaker 1: and they look into these people and these fellas Is
Speaker 1: McMillan and Sullivan are purportedly antique dealers with an import
Speaker 1: export sort of business bringing stuff in, but they're not
Speaker 1: selling a lot of antiques. They now again bring in
Speaker 1: a container load of something, often from Asia, and appears
Speaker 1: the police that they're not selling nearly enough to be
Speaker 1: making the sort of money that they obviously have. And
Speaker 1: the police formed the same conclusion as the old retired
Speaker 1: guy that they're drug dealers. And so it's becoming politically
Speaker 1: feasible to spend a bit of time and money looking
Speaker 1: at high level inputs at this stage. So the Victorian
Speaker 1: State Police Force, for the first time ever i think,
Speaker 1: formed a joint task force with i think the Federal
Speaker 1: Police and they had this Joint Task Force JTF and
Speaker 1: they called it Operation ares as in aies Ares and
Speaker 1: they really got busy with these people and started to
Speaker 1: watch them and they discovered that McMillan, who was sort
Speaker 1: of the driving force, he was the brains behind the show,
Speaker 1: was producing a lot of false identities. He did that
Speaker 1: thing that was I think probably hit the public imagination
Speaker 1: in the day of the Jackal, where the operator goes
Speaker 1: to a graveyard and finds the grave site of someone
Speaker 1: who died in infancy, a little kid who's born at
Speaker 1: roughly the right time, roughly the same age, same time
Speaker 1: as as the operator, and the operator says, oh, here
Speaker 1: we are Jacques Smith, born in nineteen fifty one whatever whatever,
Speaker 1: and they take down the details and they could use
Speaker 1: the birth date to obtain a birth certificate, a legit
Speaker 1: birth certificate for that person. But because nothing was computerized
Speaker 1: in those days, no one actually knows that that person
Speaker 1: is dead because it's not really recorded around the whole system.
Speaker 1: And what McMillan was able to do was to build
Speaker 1: a whole lot of profiles from dead children. Essentially that
Speaker 1: he had bank accounts, he had credit card deals and
Speaker 1: drivers licenses, whatever, built up from these dead people who
Speaker 1: didn't exist, and he made them exist and he turned
Speaker 1: them into passports. And so what he had was a
Speaker 1: suite of passports with his face on them with various names,
Speaker 1: real names of people that had lived and died twenty
Speaker 1: years earlier. And he was able to do the same
Speaker 1: thing for Sullivan and for the women that they were
Speaker 1: associated with, and others for other couriers. He had dozens
Speaker 1: of passports in the end and bank accounts and that
Speaker 1: was his currency for running drugs because he could then
Speaker 1: work out and remember this is pre computers, and what
Speaker 1: he did was astonishing because he would get great big
Speaker 1: books full of airline timetables, lots of fine print, thousands
Speaker 1: of line timetables, you know, across the world here A
Speaker 1: to B tw C, TOD and he would be able
Speaker 1: to work out that a courier could fly from Melbourne
Speaker 1: to Sydney to Singapore to Thailand, then buy some heroin
Speaker 1: and then switch passports and fly to London and sell
Speaker 1: on some drugs or whatever, and then switch passports again
Speaker 1: and obscure their trail around the world by switching passports,
Speaker 1: reticketing each time in a different name, so that when
Speaker 1: you flew back into Australia escorting a big heap of heroin,
Speaker 1: it didn't show on a custom's flagging system you having
Speaker 1: been in Thailand or in the Golden Triangle, because in
Speaker 1: fact you were flying back on a different name and
Speaker 1: ticket and passport than the one you flew out on.
Speaker 1: In fact, you might have changed it two or three
Speaker 1: times while you're away. And this way he would fly
Speaker 1: back into Australia looking as if he'd just visited London
Speaker 1: or something like that, which is regarded as a pretty
Speaker 1: innocent sort of trip, or Scandinavia, these sort of destinations.
Speaker 1: It was a pretty clever device and it worked very
Speaker 1: well while it worked. But of course Operation Areas they
Speaker 1: started to watch him, and they watched all these different tricks.
Speaker 1: He had this other trick with suitcases, identical suitcases, and
Speaker 1: he'd have a courier with one that'd have the drugs
Speaker 1: in it. He'd have another one that was identical but
Speaker 1: without drugs in it. When they're on the carousel at
Speaker 1: the airport, he could pick up the other one, the
Speaker 1: one with the drugs in it, and walk out with
Speaker 1: it innocently, And of course if the alarms went off,
Speaker 1: he'd go, well, it's not mine. I just looked like mine.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, it's all a mistake. So he pulled a
Speaker 1: Lese Swifties, but the police were on the job. We've
Speaker 1: probably been through the mc millan story before. But in
Speaker 1: the end, he sort of knew they were onto him.
Speaker 1: They moved against him. He knew they were following, but
Speaker 1: he's still he knew the police for following him around Melbourne,
Speaker 1: and they knew that this Thai courier guy was flying
Speaker 1: into Melbourne. The police watched this guy fly into I
Speaker 1: think Sydney and then go out to something like Broken
Speaker 1: Hill on a bus or something, and then Too Adelaide
Speaker 1: and then Perth and then back to Melbourne. And he
Speaker 1: did all this stuff to break his trip up to
Speaker 1: sort of evade detection, but the police stuck with him.
Speaker 1: They had these undercover guys and all sorts. And when
Speaker 1: our man Chowdery, his name was Chowdery, this Thai courier
Speaker 1: who was sort of a partner in the business. He
Speaker 1: was their TI connection. Let's say he gets to Melbourne
Speaker 1: and stays at the Hilton Hotels. Then was when police
Speaker 1: break into this guy's room. He's gone down for dinner
Speaker 1: or something. They break in, They get an electric drill
Speaker 1: and they drill into the bottom of the suitcase and
Speaker 1: they pull the drill out and there's the white powder
Speaker 1: on the drill and they taste it or take some
Speaker 1: to test it. Beauty, it's heroin. So they knew they
Speaker 1: had the right guys with the gear, but they still
Speaker 1: took a lot of catching because McMillan sort of knew
Speaker 1: the police were onto him, and he played this big
Speaker 1: chess game with him. What he did for the actual
Speaker 1: transfer of the drugs and money, the swapper Rooney. He
Speaker 1: pulled this thing knowing he was being watched. He met
Speaker 1: the drug carrying guy at the maternity hospital in Nurse Melbourne.
Speaker 1: It was the big maternity hospital in Nase Melbourne. Knowing
Speaker 1: that the police are going to be very reluctant to
Speaker 1: start a shooting war in a maternity hospital. So he
Speaker 1: drives a car in a lame there's the hospital. They
Speaker 1: had this sort of lameway through the basement of it,
Speaker 1: roughly between two bits of it, and he puts the
Speaker 1: windows down on the car and as he drives through,
Speaker 1: somebody throws her the money in, and they throw the
Speaker 1: drugs out to somebody who catches it. And they did
Speaker 1: it like that and they were able to make their
Speaker 1: escape even though they knew the police were watching them.
Speaker 1: They got away with that for a little while. Eventually,
Speaker 1: of course, the police nailed them. They were charged with
Speaker 1: lots and lots of stuff. They were charged with multiple
Speaker 1: conspiracies to import all this stuff, lots of stuff, and
Speaker 1: it was a very long trial. So we had McMillan
Speaker 1: and the Lambeau driving Sullivan and the tie guy Chowdery.
Speaker 1: They were the main guys, but they also had all
Speaker 1: these people on the periphery. There was another dozen of them,
Speaker 1: and they faced all these different charges. There was I
Speaker 1: think a record court hearing took one hundred days of
Speaker 1: court time, which was a lot. That's twenty weeks and
Speaker 1: five months worth. And it went on and on, and
Speaker 1: the jury came back and it actually found these main
Speaker 1: principles not guilty of everything except one major charge. They
Speaker 1: discounted this charge and that charge, and this charge and
Speaker 1: that charge. But in the end they nailed them on
Speaker 1: one major charge, which was enough to put them in Pentridge.
Speaker 1: And there they are the cell door slams. They're in
Speaker 1: Pentridge with the real bad guys of tough guys with
Speaker 1: tattoos and all the rest of it, and they've sort
Speaker 1: of fish out of water in there. But McMillan said,
Speaker 1: never fear, We will buy our way out. We've got
Speaker 1: a lot of money out in the world. He had
Speaker 1: an accountant in Carlton, a man called Max who's no
Speaker 1: longer with us. Max had his access to very large
Speaker 1: amounts of cash and could assist in that regard. And
Speaker 1: Sullivan's alleged sister, Sullivan had an older sister, well that's
Speaker 1: what they called her, and it's well held it was
Speaker 1: actually his mother. This woman that he thought was his
Speaker 1: twenty year older sister was most likely actually biologically his mother,
Speaker 1: and it had been one of those situations whereas a
Speaker 1: young woman she had had this child and pretended that
Speaker 1: it was her own mother's baby, and so on and
Speaker 1: so forth. And Sullivan's alleged older sister, really his mother
Speaker 1: helped them quite a lot, and so did various other people,
Speaker 1: some because they liked him, such as a lawyer I
Speaker 1: know that was very friendly with them, and others who
Speaker 1: were They knew journalists, they knew people in showbies, they
Speaker 1: knew lawyers, they knew a lot of people, and they've
Speaker 1: been friendly with a lot of people right around the
Speaker 1: social spectrum. And McMillan said this thing up. It was
Speaker 1: a great idea. It came unstuck, and his idea was
Speaker 1: that they were going to be rescued from Penridge by helicopter,
Speaker 1: and his people out in the world had got hold
Speaker 1: of a rogue English Air Force or Army Marine helicopter
Speaker 1: pilot and he came and stayed at I think the
Speaker 1: Southern Cross Hotel or the Winds Windsor Hotel, I think
Speaker 1: it was. That they had this chopper lined up to
Speaker 1: hire it and they were going to do this touch
Speaker 1: and go landing in the exercise yards or playing fields
Speaker 1: out of Penridge. Pentridge in those days had football grounds
Speaker 1: and all sorts of stuff, lots of area acres of ground,
Speaker 1: and he was just going to bring the chopper over
Speaker 1: and do a touch and go landing and they were
Speaker 1: going to jump on it and they were going to
Speaker 1: fly off, and they had this whole plan. It was wonderful.
Speaker 1: It was pure James Bond, and it might nearly have worked,
Speaker 1: but there was a hole in the bucket. And the
Speaker 1: hole in the bucket was that somebody somewhere must have
Speaker 1: had their phone tapped or whatever, or someone sold them
Speaker 1: out or whatever, and the policer knew this was on,
Speaker 1: and the policer or in the next room at the
Speaker 1: Windsor Hotel, listening to the chopper pilot as he entertained
Speaker 1: one of the waiters in the room, and they realized
Speaker 1: that they were on the job. And while they had
Speaker 1: the chopp a pilot where they wanted him, the chopper
Speaker 1: wasn't going to be landing in Pentridge, so they were
Speaker 1: able to stimy the escape plot at the chopper level.
Speaker 1: The chopper never got to take off and grab them.
Speaker 1: Now McMillan's plan, had it come off, was this chopper
Speaker 1: lifts off, takes them just you know, a couple of
Speaker 1: k's across the suburbs, which it would do in a
Speaker 1: matter of a minute, and land at a little sports
Speaker 1: ground in Coburg or something like that, and they were
Speaker 1: going to run into a nearby flat which was all
Speaker 1: set up with expert makeup artists in there to disguise them,
Speaker 1: total disguise, false mustaches, bids, whatever it would take, and
Speaker 1: then they were going to I think the idea was
Speaker 1: they're going to sit in a boat, a really good boat,
Speaker 1: like a twenty five foot thirty foot or something good
Speaker 1: enough to go in the ocean, big big motor, whole
Speaker 1: bit seaworthy thing, and it was on the back of
Speaker 1: a semi trailer, and the idea was going to hop
Speaker 1: in that and cover themselves over and a truck would
Speaker 1: pull out and drive up the highway north through New
Speaker 1: South Wales up to Queensland somewhere, and the idea was
Speaker 1: they would launch the boat as if they were going
Speaker 1: fishing and go to New Guinea or Indonesia or both
Speaker 1: one then the other, and escape across the world. Total
Speaker 1: James Bond fantasy, which actually could have worked, because that
Speaker 1: is the way that a Malaysian prints kidnapped his own
Speaker 1: children from Melbourne some years later, same trick. He got
Speaker 1: the kids, and he got him in an ocean going
Speaker 1: fast boat when the weather was good, and got the
Speaker 1: Malaysia and they lived there happily, i think, for many
Speaker 1: a long year in their gold plated castle in Malaysia.
Speaker 1: And of course Tony Mockbell got across Australia where he
Speaker 1: had a boat delivered by truck, and he was able
Speaker 1: to get in a hidden compartment in that boat and
Speaker 1: sailed from western Australia all the way across the world
Speaker 1: to Europe, to Greece, in fact the Mediterranean. So this
Speaker 1: plan of McMillan's was not so crazy. That's that story.
Speaker 1: But how does this come back to Lambeau Man. Well,
Speaker 1: all that stuff sort of passed Joe Taranto by. He
Speaker 1: didn't realize that he'd sold his lamboat to such a
Speaker 1: scoundrel as Michael Sullivan. And it was only many years later.
Speaker 1: And let me say this, it was only as we
Speaker 1: record this in January. It was only just before Christmas
Speaker 1: last December, so it's a matter of weeks ago. Joe Taranto,
Speaker 1: who is no longer thirty, he is seventy something. He's
Speaker 1: got a bit of time to kill before the grandkids
Speaker 1: turn up for their holidays. And he thought, I'll watch
Speaker 1: a crime show on the Telly, and he looks through
Speaker 1: some crime shows and he decides to watch one about
Speaker 1: David McMillan. It was in fact one of the Underbelly
Speaker 1: series and was called Underbelly The Man who Got Away,
Speaker 1: And that show, that dramatized show was made about David
Speaker 1: McMillan and Michael Sullivan. And when he watched that show
Speaker 1: only three weeks ago, he thought that Michael Sullivan, that's
Speaker 1: the same name as the man who bought my Lamborghini. Oh,
Speaker 1: my god, I sold my car to these people all
Speaker 1: those years ago. I didn't realized that I was dealing
Speaker 1: with probably Australia's biggest and best ever heroin importers as
Speaker 1: they were then. Of course, he were some huge heroin
Speaker 1: importers later, but as of nineteen seventy seven seventy seventy nine,
Speaker 1: I don't think there were any bigger or better or
Speaker 1: more busy than McMillan the Villain and his mate Michael Sullivan.
Speaker 1: Michael Sullivan incidentally a former champion pole vaulter. He'd been
Speaker 1: a champion pole vaulter as a youth, as a junior
Speaker 1: athlete who had set some astonishing high mark I'm going
Speaker 1: to say sixteen feet in the old but an astonishingly
Speaker 1: high mark. As a sixteen year old, injured himself in
Speaker 1: a training mishap or whatever did his knee badly. In
Speaker 1: those days, they weren't good at knee surgery, and that
Speaker 1: ended his career as an athlete. His old coach told me,
Speaker 1: assured me. He said he would have gone to the
Speaker 1: Olympics and vaulted for Australia, and he was good enough
Speaker 1: to vault against anybody in the world. But the injury
Speaker 1: finished him, and it meant that he was in pain,
Speaker 1: and he got keen on the painkillers to kill the pain,
Speaker 1: and that led him into morphine and then into heroine,
Speaker 1: and that's how he got involved in drugs because of
Speaker 1: the injury. And in the end, the drugs filled a
Speaker 1: hole in his life, that hole that was left when
Speaker 1: he could no longer be an elite athlete. And that
Speaker 1: is sort of it, except there we've got Joe Taranto,
Speaker 1: still married to the lovely Jennifer who persuaded him to
Speaker 1: sell the Lambeau all those years ago so that they
Speaker 1: could spend the money tiling their driveway and putting in
Speaker 1: a pool, which was good, really probably a good use
Speaker 1: of their money. Apart from one thing. I noticed that
Speaker 1: if you look up that particular model of Lamborghini now
Speaker 1: they bring anything up to about one hundred and twenty
Speaker 1: thousand dollars, And so if Joe Taranto still had his
Speaker 1: flawless and immaculate Lamborghini, it would be worth six figures.
Speaker 1: These days, he tells me, he drives a very plain,
Speaker 1: sensible BMW Sudan, and no more attendant sports cars for Joe,
Speaker 1: no more Lamborghinis for Joe Taranto, respectable retired gentlemen. No
Speaker 1: more for David McMillan either, because if he's not in
Speaker 1: jail in the UK, where he's last known to be living,
Speaker 1: he soon will be, because he's gone in and out
Speaker 1: of jail for his whole life, including that great story
Speaker 1: which we have told him before of him getting out
Speaker 1: of the Bangkok Hilton, which is the name for the
Speaker 1: notorious jail in Thailand. He became the first Westerner ever
Speaker 1: to break out of that jail successfully, and he broke
Speaker 1: out of it carrying an umbrella and walking away on
Speaker 1: the basis he said that escape prisoners do not carry
Speaker 1: umbrellas and that's why he did it. No more and
Speaker 1: ambiguinnis for him his life is not so good these days.
Speaker 1: And no more for Michael Sullivan because he's left us.
Speaker 1: He died for old Michael, and so the only winner
Speaker 1: in this one really is Joe Taranto, who's still got
Speaker 1: the nice house, in ventalizer and having a nice life.
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 herold'sun dot
Speaker 1: com dot au forward slash Andrew Rule. For advertising inquiries,
Speaker 1: go to news podcasts sold at news dot com dot au.
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