Speaker 1: You're listening to a mother and Mia podcast. Mama Mea
Speaker 1: acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters. This podcast
Speaker 1: was recorded on It's just after three point thirty PM
Speaker 1: on a spring afternoon in Melbourne in nineteen ninety seven
Speaker 1: and Jane Thurgodove is pulled into the driveway of her
Speaker 1: Muriel Street home, her three kids, aged eleven, six and
Speaker 1: three and tucked into the backseat of the family car.
Speaker 1: After their respective days at school and preschool, time to
Speaker 1: get inside and wind down ahead of the normal evening routine.
Speaker 1: It's Oaks Day, so there's a real buzz around town.
Speaker 1: Maybe they'll still be able to catch some of the
Speaker 1: races and fashion on the TV. But before Jane has
Speaker 1: time to finish her next thought, a stolen commodore pulls
Speaker 1: in behind her vehicle, blocking her in. A pot bellied
Speaker 1: gunman starts chasing her. She shot once twice at point
Speaker 1: blank range. Her kids watch on as she dies in
Speaker 1: front of them on the driveway. For years, police are
Speaker 1: convinced she was killed by a man with an obsession,
Speaker 1: but they were wrong. This murder of a young Melbourne
Speaker 1: mother is believed to be a devastating case of mistaken identity.
Speaker 1: Jane was just an average mum living in an average street,
Speaker 1: married to an average guy, but her murder was like
Speaker 1: something out of a gangland war, executed in broad daylight
Speaker 1: in front of her kids. Twenty seven years on, so
Speaker 1: many questions remain in this case, and it's one journalist
Speaker 1: John Sylvester has been keeping a close eye on from
Speaker 1: the start. John is Australia's longest serving crime reporter the Beat.
Speaker 1: Since nineteen seventy eight. He has written or co authored
Speaker 1: over thirty books. His latest is called Dark City. John
Speaker 1: joins us now Who was Jane so good Dove to
Speaker 1: her friends and loved ones?
Speaker 2: Jane Thurgodove was a woman in her early thirties. She
Speaker 2: was married and the mother of three. She lived in
Speaker 2: the Melbourne suburb of Knitry in a street called Muriel Street,
Speaker 2: really well liked, close to her parents and her sister,
Speaker 2: and was seen I suppose she want to put the
Speaker 2: cliche in as a suburban mum. She was living a
Speaker 2: happy and full life and she wasn't known to the
Speaker 2: general public, and as is so often the case in
Speaker 2: these treatedies, she ends up being defined by her death,
Speaker 2: not her life.
Speaker 1: Well, she was shot dead in her driveway on November seven,
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety seven, and the description given was of a
Speaker 1: pot bellied man in a holden commodore who was able
Speaker 1: to give those details.
Speaker 2: To police, A couple of passive iz and certainly when
Speaker 2: one of the witnesses was quite young, as you can imagine,
Speaker 2: in just a quiet suburban street. And really again you've
Speaker 2: got to remember CCTV things like that, which is now
Speaker 2: just routine, wasn't there, So you rely on the eyewitnesses,
Speaker 2: and very quickly a car was found not too far
Speaker 2: away burnt out. Now that was the first telltale sign.
Speaker 2: Hang on a minute, that's heading into that sort of
Speaker 2: professional world to get rid of a stolen car that
Speaker 2: had been stooped away for some time. So it wasn't
Speaker 2: just joy riding. It had been set there, so you
Speaker 2: would know that a second vehicle would have been present
Speaker 2: from there. These days, of course, and you've seen it
Speaker 2: a thousand times on television, you see that handover vias CCTV.
Speaker 2: In those days, it didn't exist. So almost the physical
Speaker 2: forensic trial ended with that burnt out car.
Speaker 1: Were those few witnesses able to place anyone else at
Speaker 1: the scene. Was the gunman alone had a driver.
Speaker 2: And so again you know, we're not looking at a
Speaker 2: lone wolf. This is heading what's going on here. But
Speaker 2: it was so strange, of course, because it smells in
Speaker 2: a way like a professional hit. But this is a
Speaker 2: woman with no connections to the underworld. And that becomes
Speaker 2: quite interesting later because Jane becomes subject of a number
Speaker 2: of rumors she was having an affair with a gangster.
Speaker 2: She was a witness at an armed robbery, and I
Speaker 2: think that tells you a lot about us, because the
Speaker 2: idea of a mother being killed in front of her
Speaker 2: children in her front driveway is so horrible. We have
Speaker 2: to find a reason and in the process blame the victim.
Speaker 2: You see, if Jane was on the wrong side of
Speaker 2: the tracks, if Jane had had a relationship with a gangster,
Speaker 2: well that means my wife, my daughter, they're safe because
Speaker 2: they're good people. So it's funny how we tend to
Speaker 2: want to blame the victims to get an answer.
Speaker 1: That's so interesting because, like you were saying, she was
Speaker 1: just a normal suburban mum, a normal lossie. And I
Speaker 1: do want to touch on the fact that her children,
Speaker 1: who were all under eleven, the youngest was three. They
Speaker 1: all watched this unfold. Did we hear from them away from.
Speaker 2: The media, kept well away from them for obvious reasons.
Speaker 2: They were really cooperative as kids would be with the police,
Speaker 2: and the police handled that well. And they had a
Speaker 2: strong family unit with Mark the husband, and Jane's parents.
Speaker 1: Well, you have been in touch with the family over
Speaker 1: the years, particularly Jane's parents. How did this crime, what
Speaker 1: happened to Jane impact their lives?
Speaker 2: Well, one can only imagine what happened to them. They're
Speaker 2: lovely people and very close to Jane and their journey,
Speaker 2: which in some ways I've tracked was really interesting. The
Speaker 2: media was pretty good, but they had a dealing with
Speaker 2: the media very early on, which shows you how we
Speaker 2: can get it so wrong. Everyone wanted, including the police,
Speaker 2: to keep this at the forefront, and often parents and
Speaker 2: loved ones who may wish to grieve privately are encouraged
Speaker 2: by police to go public because they want witnesses, they
Speaker 2: want people to understand, and they even want to get
Speaker 2: to associates of the crooks. So presenting the relatives to
Speaker 2: open their veins publicly is the hope that that will
Speaker 2: spark someone to say, well, you know what, I've never
Speaker 2: come forward before, but I will. So John and Helen
Speaker 2: were doing that, and then you know, one day they
Speaker 2: sort of get a knock on the door and it's
Speaker 2: a reporter from a particular newspaper who's looking to freshen
Speaker 2: up the story and then said we'd like a new photo.
Speaker 2: And these greeting parents go okay, and the reporter, young knaves,
Speaker 2: said and can you hurry up, I'm on deadline. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And you know these sort of things, you know, when
Speaker 2: you and I write stuff in this space, I always
Speaker 2: think of the story and thinking it may be the
Speaker 2: last story in a scrapbook. Get by a family to
Speaker 2: remind them of their daughter, their son, wife, husband, father, mother,
Speaker 2: get it right.
Speaker 1: Well, door knocks, to be honest, which is what we
Speaker 1: call those in the industry, or the reason I stopped
Speaker 1: on the road reporting. I found them harrowing to.
Speaker 3: Do my day.
Speaker 2: They were called intrusions. And I remember at a newspaper
Speaker 2: we had a young female reporter who is really good,
Speaker 2: and there was a tendency to go to her all
Speaker 2: the time to do this, and I would go to
Speaker 2: the management. So you just can't do this. You just
Speaker 2: can't have the one person doing this all the time.
Speaker 2: It's too traumatic. Now I'm lucky, and for a long
Speaker 2: period of time, I would have been so young the
Speaker 2: last time I cold called. So in these cases I
Speaker 2: would go to the police and they would go to
Speaker 2: the family and they would say right there or wrongly,
Speaker 2: this reporter, we think will give you a fair go.
Speaker 2: But they were always given the choice. They never were
Speaker 2: fronted with a person, so it would be arranged in
Speaker 2: a much more civil but it's always the hair. And
Speaker 2: there was the case where there was a lovely woman,
Speaker 2: Sarah McDermott, who went missing and she was murdered and
Speaker 2: her body was never found. And I went out to
Speaker 2: see the parents and I gravitated to the dad and
Speaker 2: there was almost an unspoken agreement that we were going
Speaker 2: to be very superficial. He was speaking of the case
Speaker 2: almost as a third party. This is what happened. She
Speaker 2: did this, She hopped on the train, she got here,
Speaker 2: and he burst into tears. I was with a female
Speaker 2: photographer and he said, I'm so sorry. The light just
Speaker 2: hit your blonde hair as it would hit my Sarah.
Speaker 1: It's an important reminder, isn't it, to keep not just
Speaker 1: the victims, but the families front of mind when we
Speaker 1: talk about these stories. Let's talk about the investigation into
Speaker 1: Jane's murder, because obviously the first place to look is family,
Speaker 1: who were all quickly cleared, so husband, parents, you know,
Speaker 1: that's just process. And then they started looking into a
Speaker 1: serving police officer that had links to the family. Why
Speaker 1: were the police interested in him? What did they uncover?
Speaker 2: Well, the first thing to know is that a murder
Speaker 2: victim has no secrets when you're alive. We've all got
Speaker 2: locked doors, every one of us, but the police have
Speaker 2: a skeleton key, and so when he had gone, those
Speaker 2: doors are open. So this police officer had for a
Speaker 2: period of time worked with John the father.
Speaker 3: He was a butcher who had a shop.
Speaker 2: So the cop knew Jane and he became obsessed with Jane.
Speaker 2: So they found some letters which connected this fellow. They
Speaker 2: went and they found that he tried to buy a
Speaker 2: funeral plot next to where Jane was to be. I
Speaker 2: think his computer code was her.
Speaker 3: Date of birth.
Speaker 2: There was like a a shrine tour in the house.
Speaker 2: He broadly fitted the description of the gunman you're thinking
Speaker 2: of this guy, and in police terms, he'd never been
Speaker 2: at the sharp end, so it wasn't like he knew gangsters,
Speaker 2: it wasn't like the gun used was a service revolver,
Speaker 2: so there was a couple of holes there. But he
Speaker 2: was then asked to mend a lineup, which he refused.
Speaker 2: He refused to give DNA and largely wouldn't answer question,
Speaker 2: so that naturally it raised your suspicion. It would certainly
Speaker 2: raise mond. So after a period of time they gave
Speaker 2: him a light detector, which is not admissible but good intelligence.
Speaker 2: And he was asked the question, because you never asked
Speaker 2: on the light detector, did you murder? So the question
Speaker 2: was are you responsible for the death of Jane the
Speaker 2: good Dove? And he said no, and of course it
Speaker 2: red lines, so they go he's lying. It took years
Speaker 2: to find out. He was asked, well, once they knew
Speaker 2: he didn't do it, I said, what was that about?
Speaker 2: And he wrongly believed that Mark the husband, had found
Speaker 2: out about this guy and had killed Jane, so he
Speaker 2: felt responsible.
Speaker 1: So that was why it came back as being false.
Speaker 2: When in fact he had nothing to do with it.
Speaker 2: As Mark had nothing to.
Speaker 1: Do with it, You received a phone call at work
Speaker 1: a few days after Jane was murdered, which was fascinating.
Speaker 1: Tell us about what you were told in that call.
Speaker 2: So this is headline news, and I get a phone
Speaker 2: call from someone who had a colorful background. He ran
Speaker 2: peat shops and he had a background in butchery. And
Speaker 2: there was a lawyer by the name of Philip Peters,
Speaker 2: and Philip Peters had enlisted this fella because Peters hated
Speaker 2: a crooked by the name of Peter Kippriy. So the
Speaker 2: plan was to abduct kippri take him to a farmhouse
Speaker 2: in Sinnanad, and then torture him to get some money,
Speaker 2: and then kill him and dismember him. Now, the person
Speaker 2: who rang me, and we'll call him John, John actually
Speaker 2: worked for the police in the end, so he was
Speaker 2: like used as effectively an undercover. So he goes along
Speaker 2: with his plan. One of the reasons the story is
Speaker 2: stuck with me is that they got the dummy that
Speaker 2: was used in the Fast Forward television program. So the
Speaker 2: police got that and put it in the boot of
Speaker 2: John's car, and they arranged this meeting in a sort
Speaker 2: of a quadrangle, and Peters was brought there by John,
Speaker 2: and he opened the boot to show the body, which
Speaker 2: was the Fast Forward dummy shut it and then the
Speaker 2: police arrive, Sorons all set up. They arrest John obviously
Speaker 2: that's a trick, and Peters and they put them in
Speaker 2: a blue car where Peters makes certain ambitions. Peter's is
Speaker 2: charged and the charges are pleaded down, very much down,
Speaker 2: and he does some jail time, but he meets some
Speaker 2: crooks inside.
Speaker 1: So what did John say when he called you?
Speaker 2: He says, the hair on the back of her neck
Speaker 2: has stood up over that sheiler in Ndri And I said,
Speaker 2: what he may? He said, she's got the blonde bob
Speaker 2: and she is a spit for Carmel Kipri, Peter Kipriy wife.
Speaker 2: And I go, yes, I what he says. Don't you
Speaker 2: know they both live in Uriel Street. So, being lazy,
Speaker 2: I persuaded Andrew Ruhle, who worked at the age with
Speaker 2: mey to do the hard work and to go out
Speaker 2: to Mirror Street, which he did. And he went to
Speaker 2: the Kippri's house and it was three from the corner
Speaker 2: in Nedri in Mirror Street. James was three from the corner.
Speaker 2: And Andrew saw that the four wheel drive of the Kippers
Speaker 2: was backed into the driveway, and he saw certain security,
Speaker 2: and Andrew being Andrew knocked on the door and spoke
Speaker 2: to Carmel, and Carmel said, yeah, it really could have
Speaker 2: been for me. And they had their own little code.
Speaker 2: You know, this is before texting and so on, so
Speaker 2: they had a particular whistle, so they whistle to say
Speaker 2: it's mate. And Peterkipriy had a phone book full of
Speaker 2: enemies and so he had started the number of people.
Speaker 2: So a lot of people wanted him dead. But I
Speaker 2: went to the police and said, don't you see the
Speaker 2: connection here? And of course they knew, but they were
Speaker 2: pretty much more about the Copper, so they just ignored it.
Speaker 2: They went down that track in all these sort of tregies.
Speaker 2: When they finally cleared him, that is the copper And
Speaker 2: so what's the next thing. Well, let's go and have
Speaker 2: a look at Peti kipri So they go through it
Speaker 2: all and they find some stuff out and there was
Speaker 2: a crook by the name of Mordy, Stephen Mordy, and
Speaker 2: he was a Biki and he'd been acquitted of the murder.
Speaker 2: So now we backtrack and we see that there was
Speaker 2: a fella in jail with Filip Peters who was bikie
Speaker 2: connected to Mordy Gang, which was in Geelong. So the
Speaker 2: theory was the idea was formed in jail and that
Speaker 2: this middleman went to Morty. What we do know is
Speaker 2: that after the mistaken identity hit, Mordy was beaten severely
Speaker 2: within the biking chapter. We suspect that that's because he
Speaker 2: got it wrong. Mordy devolves into alcohol and drugs and dies,
Speaker 2: so there is a link gone. The police keep working
Speaker 2: on this case and they find the person that they
Speaker 2: believe is the person who stole the car, fellow called Reynolds,
Speaker 2: who was a mate of Mordy. So they decided to
Speaker 2: pick him up from memory on a Monday in two
Speaker 2: thousand and four and plut me down. He died as
Speaker 2: an abating accident that weekend on the Barwan River near
Speaker 2: the Great Ocean Road. And Jane's parents really cut through
Speaker 2: this because we were going through the Underworld War at
Speaker 2: the time and they were saying, don't you think it's
Speaker 2: wrong that all the resources or the things like listening
Speaker 2: devices and trackers and all these sort of things were
Speaker 2: being used by the Piranha Task Force looking at the
Speaker 2: death of gangsters when their blameless daughter is murdered and
Speaker 2: by the time they shift, it's too late. And you think,
Speaker 2: when not just the car thief, he's not even the driver.
Speaker 2: You think, if they've got to him, would he not
Speaker 2: have been offered a deal?
Speaker 3: Could he have rolled over?
Speaker 2: And could he have given us the names of the
Speaker 2: people who actually ordered the hit? And that chapter was gone,
Speaker 2: and so John and Helen had to live with that.
Speaker 2: And then John came to me and said, I want
Speaker 2: a million dollar reward for Jane. I said the sort
Speaker 2: of money at the time was fifty or one hundred thousand,
Speaker 2: and I couldn't say that to John. They're not going
Speaker 2: to do this for your daughter and not other people.
Speaker 2: So I said, well, what about we get an idea
Speaker 2: together where there's a sort of special class of murders,
Speaker 2: and these are murders such as Jane's, where you believe
Speaker 2: that you're very close and money can be the tipping point.
Speaker 2: So not for every case. Now it is for every case,
Speaker 2: but back then it wasn't. So I went to an advisor,
Speaker 2: to the premiere, Steve Brax. I went to a woman,
Speaker 2: his adviser, Jane Wilson, who had been previously had worked
Speaker 2: rounds with us, and done courts. She was actually married
Speaker 2: to a homicide detective as well, so she actually got it.
Speaker 2: And I put this idea of a million dollars for
Speaker 2: a class, and she pushed it to the premier, who
Speaker 2: bravely took it on. Now, these finance people were saying,
Speaker 2: this is crazy, because you know, this is the liability
Speaker 2: and here's the paper clips, and this is why we
Speaker 2: think it wouldn't work.
Speaker 3: And he pushed through.
Speaker 2: It and it didn't help John and Helen, but it
Speaker 2: did solve murders. And so there was a case of
Speaker 2: Messina hal Vargas who was stabbed to death tending her
Speaker 2: grandmother's grave at Faulkner, and everyone knew it was the
Speaker 2: serial killer predature past, but there wasn't enough information. Well,
Speaker 2: once that million dollar reward, which was John's idea, once
Speaker 2: that million dollar reward was put up, they got the
Speaker 2: witnesses they need and he was convicted. And that all
Speaker 2: came from Jane's father not letting the case go.
Speaker 1: How does that feel for him, knowing that he's helped
Speaker 1: all these other people, but you selfishly would be so
Speaker 1: frustrated that it's done nothing for your own case.
Speaker 2: Well, you'd probably have to ask John, But I think
Speaker 2: the feeling is a moderk McBride and a great deal
Speaker 2: of resentment.
Speaker 3: Why is it?
Speaker 2: It may and they always want the case kept open.
Speaker 1: All of this movement that we've been talking about in
Speaker 1: Jane's case happened, you know, about five years afterwards in
Speaker 1: terms of Mardi and Reynolds died two thousand and one,
Speaker 1: two thousand and four, and then this million dollar award
Speaker 1: around five years after the murder. It's now been twenty
Speaker 1: seven years. Is that case still open? Have we had
Speaker 1: anything happen in the last fifteen or so years to
Speaker 1: help the case?
Speaker 2: The case is always open because we've still we all
Speaker 2: got potential things that can happen, and we've also got
Speaker 2: the driver. What happens is alibi witnesses, fall out, marriages
Speaker 2: break up, people who know the truth, find God or
Speaker 2: just decide that they can't carry the burden. So that's
Speaker 2: such a cliche you've heard so many times, but often
Speaker 2: it's one phone call. And what's different now is the
Speaker 2: way cold cases are done in Australia, and we're one
Speaker 2: of the few nations that do it in that regard
Speaker 2: the cold case murder. So certainly in Victorian would imagine
Speaker 2: in New South Wales you have a list of these
Speaker 2: cold cases and they have been great on what level
Speaker 2: of solvability and the age and so on, and then
Speaker 2: you have a look and it could be something like DNA. Now,
Speaker 2: for example, in Victoria, we've got what's called the Freezer Files,
Speaker 2: which a group of scientists for insic scientists. Obviously they
Speaker 2: knew what DNA was and they were well aware that
Speaker 2: the capacity to test for DNA was coming. So even
Speaker 2: though you could not test, they were taking exhibits and
Speaker 2: freezing them in the hope that in one day it
Speaker 2: would work. And there have been multiple cases, mostly rapes,
Speaker 2: that have been solved well down the track. There was
Speaker 2: a case where he was just looking at the other
Speaker 2: day where sixteen years after the event a fellow was
Speaker 2: caught doing a burglary in Queensland and that linked him
Speaker 2: to the rape in Shepherd.
Speaker 3: And even DNA. You know, we think of DNA.
Speaker 2: As a stationary piece of evidence, but the methods get
Speaker 2: better and better and better, so you can test something
Speaker 2: and not get a result ten years ago, and you
Speaker 2: will get a result in five years from the same
Speaker 2: effective sample.
Speaker 1: So crooks better watch their backs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a slow process, but science catches them up.
Speaker 1: Next, we move on from the case of Jane fir
Speaker 1: Gooddove as I ask John about other cases of mistaken
Speaker 1: identity and whether, after nearly fifty years as a crime reporter,
Speaker 1: any case shocks him. Cases of mistaken identity, like we're
Speaker 1: talking about what we believe happened in the case of Jane,
Speaker 1: how common is that, particularly in Australia, more often than
Speaker 1: you would like.
Speaker 2: With the knowledge that hitmen biromart stupid.
Speaker 1: Which is not what you would think because hitman, you know,
Speaker 1: when you watch TV movies, they're usually kind of sold
Speaker 1: to us as the ultimate criminal, the really smart and
Speaker 1: catch related ones.
Speaker 2: It's funny because to pass and I was talking to
Speaker 2: the then head of the homicide squad and saying what
Speaker 2: a monster he was, and he had a different view.
Speaker 2: He said, these people they're dreadful and they're dangerous and
Speaker 2: they should never be let out. But I feel sorry
Speaker 2: for them, he said, because they're driven by evil compulsions
Speaker 2: that they can't control. He said, do you reckon if
Speaker 2: there was a queue in life between being an obsessive,
Speaker 2: violent serial killer or a normal person who can have loving,
Speaker 2: long lasting relations, which queue do you think everyone would
Speaker 2: jump in? So he's saying, these people don't have a choice.
Speaker 2: He said, the people I had to test hit me
Speaker 2: people who will go and kill someone and then come
Speaker 2: home for a roslamb dinner. So they're the ones he
Speaker 2: to test, and we tend to put them up as
Speaker 2: cool and calm. There was a case against who was
Speaker 2: set up to be hit. But he lived in a
Speaker 2: sort of a new development which was a little bit
Speaker 2: of a lego land, you know, one of those places
Speaker 2: where every house was the same and you're only allowed
Speaker 2: to paint them one of three ways, so all the
Speaker 2: houses are the same. So this bloke, there'd been a
Speaker 2: go at him once, so all he did was starting
Speaker 2: parking his car up the road and say he did that,
Speaker 2: And these clowns arrived and went one, two three four,
Speaker 2: there's his car, and they went round the back. Every
Speaker 2: house is identical. Every house had a garage, so they
Speaker 2: went one, two three four five, this is the house.
Speaker 2: And there was an Asian real estate student and the
Speaker 2: other bloke was a Middle Eastern bodybuilder in his thirties.
Speaker 2: And we've got a pencil thin Asian real estate student
Speaker 2: who's no more than twenty. He'd been gaming with his
Speaker 2: friends in the garage and when he walked out, he
Speaker 2: was shot dead.
Speaker 1: And they thought that that was legitimately their target, or
Speaker 1: just didn't care.
Speaker 2: They believed it was the target of it. They didn't
Speaker 2: do their homework. We had a greengrocer shot dead early
Speaker 2: in the morning and the offenders were Bikis and they've
Speaker 2: never said why. Everyone knows it's mistaken identity. There was
Speaker 2: a crook who lived out that way. They followed the
Speaker 2: wrong person and shot him in a pail of bullets
Speaker 2: on a freeway. Way back in the eighties. I'm sure
Speaker 2: you remember the case of Mick Drury, the undercover police
Speaker 2: officer that Roger Rogerson and Christopherdael Flannery were involved in
Speaker 2: an attempted hit on him. Well, Mick was doing a
Speaker 2: job in Melbourne and a Melbourne crook, calld Alan Williams,
Speaker 2: was the target. Williams got away from the sting which
Speaker 2: Mick Drury was the undercover, and Williams ultimately knew that
Speaker 2: Mick Drury was the only witness who could pot him
Speaker 2: for heroin trafficking, so that's why he went to Roger
Speaker 2: Rogerson via hitman Christopher Dale Flannery to offer a bribe,
Speaker 2: and when Mick wouldn't take the bribe, the next thing
Speaker 2: it was decided, well, we'll kill him. So when it
Speaker 2: doesn't work, Allan Williams is the loose thread here because
Speaker 2: he's the only one who knows the truth other than
Speaker 2: obviously Rogerson and Flannery. So a Victorian copper rings Williams
Speaker 2: and says, don't go home, they're going to kill you.
Speaker 2: He takes his advice, but his brother in law Lindsay Simpson,
Speaker 2: is not told. So Lindsey turns up at Allan's place.
Speaker 2: There's two hitmen and they come down the drive, drag
Speaker 2: him out, and he goes, my name is Simpson, and
Speaker 2: they shoot him dead. The hitmen were Dennis Allen, the
Speaker 2: drug dealer who's now dead, and Ray the red rat Pollet,
Speaker 2: who's now been deported back to the UK. And I
Speaker 2: spoke to Pollet and Pollard said, oh, I didn't do it,
Speaker 2: but I was told that the hitmen were not wearing balaclavas,
Speaker 2: and when they dragged him out, they thought, shit, he's
Speaker 2: seen us. We're going to get killed. So it was
Speaker 2: murder in cold blood of an innocent man. And the
Speaker 2: other area about the hitmen is how often it's not
Speaker 2: mistaken identity, but it's collateral damage. Way back during the
Speaker 2: Underworld War, there was a hit on Jason Moran, but
Speaker 2: but Squally Barbara was in the car and he was
Speaker 2: shot dead and the hip man later time place I
Speaker 2: did Nemono's in the car and in the back of
Speaker 2: the van was half a dozen kids. He just saw
Speaker 2: two men murdered less than I meet you in front
Speaker 2: of them.
Speaker 1: It's just this complete lack of feeling for life, for
Speaker 1: innocence for anyone but themselves.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, Michael Marshall was connected in the Underworld, but it
Speaker 2: was also it was a hot dog vendor and he
Speaker 2: was shot dead in the street in front of his
Speaker 2: little boy. And when the police asked him what he did,
Speaker 2: he said, I ran a mum, but I looked left
Speaker 2: and right like I was always told to.
Speaker 1: I'm going to expose you here. But you've been covering
Speaker 1: crime since nineteen seventy eight, nearly fifty years. Does anything
Speaker 1: surprise you anymore? The depths of horrible that human beings
Speaker 1: will subject other humans too.
Speaker 2: Why I can keep going is for every horrible thing,
Speaker 2: there's heroism Messina hal Vargas as, we have discussed just
Speaker 2: a dreadful, dreadful crime, but the parents, George and Christina.
Speaker 2: George is that successful Margaret. He jumped ship, he cut caine,
Speaker 2: He worked the hard jobs, got a small business, turned
Speaker 2: it into a medium business, brought his family out, and
Speaker 2: after the death of his daughter, he became like an
Speaker 2: amazing one man lobbyist and you're all the media. He
Speaker 2: would kiss the girls on the cheek and ask them
Speaker 2: about their families. When Jane thurgodove the original reward the
Speaker 2: police when I was fifty thousand, and there's an iconic
Speaker 2: picture of Jane looking at the camera and you just
Speaker 2: know she's a lovely person. And the Premier, Jeff Kennet,
Speaker 2: said let's make it one hundred. And then George hal
Speaker 2: Vargas went to see the Premier and said, so a
Speaker 2: blonde Australian girl is with Greek girls because the reward
Speaker 2: for Messina was fifty and Jeff immediately said, no, well
Speaker 2: the reward for your daughter is going to be one hundred.
Speaker 2: And he kept going and he would never let the
Speaker 2: case go, and the police did one two, three task forces.
Speaker 2: Paul Coughlan was the Director of Public Prosecutions. He later
Speaker 2: became a Supreme Court judge. This is what separates us
Speaker 2: from most countries in the world. Jupas han't been convicted
Speaker 2: of two murders. He had been sentenced not once, but
Speaker 2: twice to life no minimum. He was not getting parole,
Speaker 2: he was never getting out of jail. So we come
Speaker 2: to Messina's case and you could just say to the parents, way, look,
Speaker 2: we know he did it, rest assured he'll never get out.
Speaker 2: But it was Paul Coughlin who said the Halvargus family
Speaker 2: deserved justice. So he prosecuted him for the third murder,
Speaker 2: successfully convicted, he appealed, the conviction was quashed, and they
Speaker 2: did it again. They went through the trial again and
Speaker 2: he was convicted. The fact that we society spent over
Speaker 2: a million dollars to get that Dan Court for the
Speaker 2: how Varguss is why we remain a civilized society. And
Speaker 2: it also tells you about policing because there was a
Speaker 2: star witness was Andrew Fraser. He was a lawyer that
Speaker 2: police hated. They really thought he ran too close to
Speaker 2: the crooks and he developed a cocaine habit. And he
Speaker 2: wouldn't be the first and he was charged with a
Speaker 2: number of cocaine offenses and did jail time, got a
Speaker 2: big whack, and he should have been teaching English in
Speaker 2: a medium security prison, but instead coppers with long memories
Speaker 2: put in some files to say his life's in danger,
Speaker 2: so he had to do his time with the worst
Speaker 2: of the worst child killers and so on. And he
Speaker 2: was in with Jepass, and they spent a lot of
Speaker 2: time together. And when Geapass gave a no comment record
Speaker 2: of interviewed at the police, they thought it was Fraser,
Speaker 2: so they hated him even more. But when there was
Speaker 2: a reinvestigation, a copper who was prepared to part his ego,
Speaker 2: he rang Fraser, who was then in Saule Prison in
Speaker 2: Country Victoria, and said, mister Fraser, I'm reinvestigating the Messina
Speaker 2: hal Vargas matter and you spent some time with Gepass.
Speaker 2: I wonder if he can help me. And the policeman
Speaker 2: Paul Scarlett expected Fraser to say get staffed, and Fraser said,
Speaker 2: what took you so long? You better come and see me.
Speaker 2: And Fraser gave evidence that Gepass frightened bugs had not
Speaker 2: actually physically confessed, but had mind what had happened and
Speaker 2: the active miming involved creeping up from behind and stabbing,
Speaker 2: a effect that was not known to the general public,
Speaker 2: and he became the star witness and without him there
Speaker 2: never would have been a conviction.
Speaker 1: You're listening to true crime Conversations with me Jemma Bass.
Speaker 1: After the break I continue to ask renowned true crime
Speaker 1: writer and journalist John Sylvester about some of the most
Speaker 1: compelling cases from his career, focusing on Australian serial killers.
Speaker 1: I want to touch on serial killers. We don't have
Speaker 1: as many in Australia as we do overseas, but you
Speaker 1: have worked and covered on a few cases involving people
Speaker 1: who kill multiples, and I wanted to ask you about
Speaker 1: John Leslie Coombs. He's an Australian serial killer, but he
Speaker 1: isn't a name that I would hazard to guess as
Speaker 1: being as infamous, Australians might not know as much about him.
Speaker 1: Why do you think that is because he did kill multiple.
Speaker 2: People, because there was such a gap between it. In
Speaker 2: the eighties, he killed somebody and he does his time,
Speaker 2: but then later they find out that just months before
Speaker 2: he'd killed first, he'd lured a fellow onto a boat,
Speaker 2: killed him and then repeatedly run him over with a
Speaker 2: propeller to shred him up. So he comes up a
Speaker 2: second time, and probably because he'd already done his twelve
Speaker 2: years for the first one, and whatever, he doesn't get
Speaker 2: a big sentence and he's let out again, And of
Speaker 2: course shortly afterwards he kills the third time, this time
Speaker 2: a female which he lures to Phillip Island, and it's
Speaker 2: like he's refining his methods. The propeller thing. They never
Speaker 2: found the body, so that seemed to be a good
Speaker 2: way of disposing of the body. And in this case
Speaker 2: he dismembered his victim in a path which takes a
Speaker 2: long time and an incredible cold bloodedness, and then has
Speaker 2: taken the pieces down in bags to a pear and
Speaker 2: thrown them in. And he probably would have got away
Speaker 2: with it, except tides being unpredictable, a leg turned up
Speaker 2: on the beach and then it went from there by Now,
Speaker 2: of course we're in the time where we got toll
Speaker 2: roads and things pinging and so and so he can
Speaker 2: be placed down there, and so this time the judges
Speaker 2: have ensured that there is no chance that he'll ever
Speaker 2: be released. But again the police say ed looked like
Speaker 2: Father Christmas. I'm very benign, good company.
Speaker 1: See, when you listen to what he did, it surprises
Speaker 1: me that he isn't as infamous is someone like a
Speaker 1: malat or you know, even a Paul Danya, who is
Speaker 1: another serial killer that you covered. He murdered three women
Speaker 1: in Melbourne and people do know his name a lot more.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, Daniel of course struck over six weeks in Frankston
Speaker 2: in the early nineties, and it tells you how things
Speaker 2: have changed. Three women, and again I think it wouldn't
Speaker 2: have happened if we had the proper computer system as
Speaker 2: we do now, because there was an event down there
Speaker 2: where woman by the name of Donna, her flat was
Speaker 2: broken into and her cats killed that he used the
Speaker 2: blood to write Donna, You're dead on the wall, and
Speaker 2: when the police did the investigation, it was interesting. Donna
Speaker 2: just had a feeling she was being stalked, and she
Speaker 2: went to her boyfriend, who was a pizza delivery guy,
Speaker 2: and said, can I do the night shift with you
Speaker 2: with the baby. So she wasn't there. She would have
Speaker 2: been the first victim, but she nominated that she'd gone
Speaker 2: to see her sister who lived near Danya and said
Speaker 2: he looked at me in such a way he should
Speaker 2: be on your suspect list. That information never got to
Speaker 2: the task force looking at the serial killer at Frankston. Now,
Speaker 2: animal mutilation is a key trigger to serial killers, so
Speaker 2: Daniel would have been on the list, of which he wasn't.
Speaker 2: Three murders and the hero is someone if you don't
Speaker 2: hear about, and that's Vicky Collins, who was a posty.
Speaker 2: And she happened to be riding a little motorbike doing
Speaker 2: her rounds. And she got to sky Road and she
Speaker 2: saw a car partner a track and there wasn't another plate.
Speaker 2: And as she went past, she flipped into the rearview
Speaker 2: mirror and she saw a big guy sort of hunched
Speaker 2: down behind the steering wheel as though not to be seen.
Speaker 2: I don't know about you. It's the end of a
Speaker 2: long day. You've been working since six am and I
Speaker 2: would have just finished my round and then made a
Speaker 2: phone call from the post office. She got to the
Speaker 2: first house out of sight and she went in. She
Speaker 2: made a call and said to the police suspect car
Speaker 2: and the poor woman, she says, just before she went in,
Speaker 2: she saw a schoolgirl walking along and she thought about
Speaker 2: warning her, but there's nothing really to say. And that
Speaker 2: was Natalie Russell, who was the last victim of Dania.
Speaker 2: But Dania saw Natalie coming, got out of the car,
Speaker 2: got in front, already, had his ambush spot selected, waited
Speaker 2: and of course murdered it with.
Speaker 3: A red handed knife.
Speaker 1: We thank him for in place.
Speaker 3: On the strap.
Speaker 1: He would have found it at the scene in two pieces.
Speaker 3: What was it?
Speaker 1: Useful streamer.
Speaker 2: When he got out, the police were already there looking
Speaker 2: at his car, so he walked home. The next day,
Speaker 2: Natalie's body's found and the police are at their lowest.
Speaker 2: We don't know who's done this, and he struck again,
Speaker 2: and then of course they get the running sheets that
Speaker 2: there was a particular car here and there have been
Speaker 2: other reports of that car. So they go to see
Speaker 2: Daniel and the head of that investigation was Rod Wilson.
Speaker 2: And you remember I told you about the political advisor
Speaker 2: that helped with the million dollars. That was Jane Wilson.
Speaker 2: Rod Wilson was the investigator for Dania. He went in
Speaker 2: and he just smelled it that Daniel was too cooperative,
Speaker 2: didn't ask enough questions. He thought, I want to talk
Speaker 2: to this guy and took him back, and it was
Speaker 2: over a thousand questions before the Zinger Rogers letting him
Speaker 2: tell his story, and then after a thousand questions, he
Speaker 2: asked him about cuts on his hands, and then he
Speaker 2: gives an answer about how he was fixing the engine
Speaker 2: on his car and the screwdriver slipped, but the way
Speaker 2: he did it didn't fit the injury, so he changed
Speaker 2: his hand position and you can see him look up
Speaker 2: and go, I'm in trouble. And that's the first time
Speaker 2: Rod said.
Speaker 3: I don't believe you.
Speaker 2: And the piece of skin that had been taken from
Speaker 2: Dania's hand in the stabbing Frenzy was found with Natalie
Speaker 2: and once Dania knew he was cooked. It's weird to
Speaker 2: watch him because he confesses enthusiastically, and at one point
Speaker 2: he takes the police to where he had hidden one
Speaker 2: of the victim's purses and the police it had been raining.
Speaker 2: He always struck when it rained, and the police went
Speaker 2: and immediately couldn't And Thenick goes in and digs like
Speaker 2: a dog and then pulls it out and it's like
Speaker 2: a trophy. He goes, see here, it is here, it
Speaker 2: is It's like he's part of the investigations team go
Speaker 2: back to his place and you watch him. He's smiling
Speaker 2: like an idiot, and he's holding his runners up, looking
Speaker 2: at the police. He wants them to ask, so they say,
Speaker 2: what about the runners? And he says, whenever I wore
Speaker 2: them during one of those crimes, I would take them
Speaker 2: back and put them on the radiator to change the tread.
Speaker 2: The look on his face is like a school kid saying,
Speaker 2: aren't I clever? You know I went a gold star?
Speaker 1: What was it like for you covering those kinds of cases.
Speaker 2: I'd move to the Sunday eight so I was not
Speaker 2: under the deadline pressure. So I was watching it and
Speaker 2: I saw the investigators were friends, and homicide people work
Speaker 2: on a slow burn. It's all about the Supreme Court
Speaker 2: in two years time. These people knew every day that
Speaker 2: they didn't get a result. They were closer to another
Speaker 2: murder and the devastating I interviewed one of the local
Speaker 2: police greg guy Bernie Rankin years later, and he burst
Speaker 2: into tears and he just said that just came up
Speaker 2: to me. I didn't even know it was coming. So
Speaker 2: the baggage that they can and I remember, as I said,
Speaker 2: he always struck when a rain because he knew how
Speaker 2: to wash away clothes. And that last weekend, I went
Speaker 2: to bed and it was raining, and I thought it's
Speaker 2: going to happen, and I felt so dreadful. And the
Speaker 2: next morning they found Natalie. In those days, it's landlined.
Speaker 2: The phone rang and it was a Voicemaie just said
Speaker 2: we've got them. And the relief. But it's interesting because
Speaker 2: there's lots of vision that you can watch, and so
Speaker 2: there's women were being walked to their cars, and how
Speaker 2: quickly he was going to strike one of his victims.
Speaker 2: It's just like a horrible Hollywood movie. I was a
Speaker 2: young man who was cooking an omelet for a friend
Speaker 2: and didn't have enough eggs, so just slipped down to
Speaker 2: the local milker. Dania had tried to abduct a woman
Speaker 2: and had failed.
Speaker 3: She'd fought her way free, so.
Speaker 2: He's angry and humiliated, and he sees the car's open.
Speaker 2: He hops in the back seat and hides in the
Speaker 2: back seat next to the baby seat, and then jumps out.
Speaker 2: She actually loses control and clips out a building, but
Speaker 2: in the end takes away. Come the day of his arrest,
Speaker 2: there's a group of women who've gone shopping and one
Speaker 2: of them's bit tired, so she just has a kip
Speaker 2: in the car and when they come back, the car
Speaker 2: park is ninety percent empty.
Speaker 3: Yet there's a car parked.
Speaker 2: Right next to this other vehicle, and the women who
Speaker 2: ensure can come back and out jumps a man and
Speaker 2: one of them recognizes him because it's local. It's Danya,
Speaker 2: and Danya had asked this woman's daughter out for a
Speaker 2: date and she'd rejected him, and then they found all
Speaker 2: their chickens decapitated. But the woman who'd been in the
Speaker 2: car napping said, I thought he'd come back because I
Speaker 2: felt the presence of someone in the backseat.
Speaker 1: That's so creepy.
Speaker 2: It's entirely likely that he got in the car expecting
Speaker 2: her to wake up and drive away, and that when
Speaker 2: the others came back, he got out. And one of
Speaker 2: Natalie Russell's friends said recently, Dania is the reason that
Speaker 2: women in Frankston still look in the backseat before they
Speaker 2: drive off. Now, the police warned every women at the
Speaker 2: time basically, lockdown, don't go out unlesshafter years later, one
Speaker 2: of those investigators, Mick Hughes, became head of the homicide
Speaker 2: squad and he had a case remarkably similar, and that
Speaker 2: is a young woman stalked in a park and killed,
Speaker 2: and he immediately saw the similarities with Natalie seventeen years
Speaker 2: old schoolgirl. The difference, of course, with CCTV, they were
Speaker 2: able to track the guy pretty quickly in Getting, but
Speaker 2: Mick Hughes made statements along the line of probably don't
Speaker 2: walk through parks on your own, that sort of thing,
Speaker 2: and wow, the pylon on him a victim blaming. But
Speaker 2: I knew what Mick had been through and the guilt
Speaker 2: that these fellows failed, and it was the advice he
Speaker 2: would have given his own family. And imagine going to
Speaker 2: an inquest of another murder and go, yeah, I thought
Speaker 2: that was going to happen, but I.
Speaker 3: Didn't want to anyone.
Speaker 1: I want to end with Jane. Her story has inspired
Speaker 1: a new Channel nine crime show that's currently airing, which
Speaker 1: you helped with. Actually that is obviously based on real
Speaker 1: events or inspired by real events, but it's got a
Speaker 1: fictionalized lead character. Do you think that retelling the story
Speaker 1: in a format like that is going to help the case?
Speaker 2: It does show you one there are no secrets and
Speaker 2: two the potential for mistaken identity type crimes, and.
Speaker 1: It gets as talking about Jane, you know, separately, we're
Speaker 1: doing a podcast right now about her story, so you know,
Speaker 1: every little bit helps, hopefully nothing else.
Speaker 2: There is a million dollars out there, and the person
Speaker 2: who set this up is alive. So people connected with
Speaker 2: Mardi or Reynolds, or the car thief, or the person
Speaker 2: who provided the gun or the person it was the
Speaker 2: go between who I believe has spoken to police. There's
Speaker 2: a million dollars there. There is a brief of evidence
Speaker 2: ready to go. And remember what we said regarding Messana Halvargas.
Speaker 2: It was that one phone call from the policeman Paul
Speaker 2: Scarlet to a person in jail in the lawyer Andrew Fraser,
Speaker 2: that resulted everything turning around in about one minute.
Speaker 1: Thanks to John Sylvester for assisting us to tell this story.
Speaker 1: True Crime Conversations is a Muma mea podcast hosted and
Speaker 1: produced by me Jemma Bass, Nina Brown, and Tarlie Blackman,
Speaker 1: with audio design by Scott Stronik,