The defining moment in the Wood Royal Commission came on 11 December 1995 when Wayne Eade, former head of the Gosford Drug Squad, faced questioning by Virginia Bell, assistant counsel to the Commission. Yes, he thought he was an officer ‘of impeccable integrity’. No, he did not have an interest in child porn videos. Nor had he tried to buy ecstasy for colleagues; he knew that was an illegal drug. He had certainly never visited a witness code-named GDU7, a former prostitute and drug dealer, while on duty. It was a classic piece of crossexamination. Eade was then invited to look at a film taken when he was on duty at 10.40 p.m. on 27 August that year. Up on the television screens in the room appeared a film of GDU7 pouring a line of cocaine on the officer’s penis and then proceeding to lick it off. She then started to talk about a shipment of cocaine before they moved to a couch where he began masturbating and talking about buying ecstasy and a porn video of children. The screen went blank as GDU7 was about to provide more oral sex. Commissioner James Wood asked Eade if he wished to see more of the film, adding, ‘I’m not saying that by way of a threat. I’m not suggesting I want to show it publicly, but you and your solicitor are free to view the entirety of the tape including the sexual relations depicted, if you wish to do so.’
He did not. Before the end of the day the man about whom there had been suspicions for the previous 10 years, and who had survived a number of internal investigations, had been dismissed by the beleaguered Commissioner Tony Lauer. That half-hour broke the resistance of corrupt officers. Who could tell who was on film and in what position? It was no longer a question of solidarity, more one of all hands to the life raft.
Eade was later sentenced to 22 months’ imprisonment for inciting and procuring the supply of prohibited drugs and knowingly giving false evidence to the Commission. In 2006 he was ordered to pay over $286 000 to the state, which had settled an action by a Michael O’Sullivan who claimed that Eade had threatened to load him up with heroin. (R v Eade [2002] NSWCCA 257; State of NSW v Eade [2006] NSWSC 84; O’Sullivan v The Queen [2002] NSWCCA 98)
In 2001 Eades, brother of top Victorian jockey Gavin and prison friend of Carl Williams, was convicted of culpable driving causing death after a road-rage attack in the Gardiner railway station car park in Glen Iris in August 2000. Eades drove at Peter Hess, knocking him to the ground and then reversing over him. Hess suffered a heart attack after sustaining breaks to almost every rib, his pelvis, collarbone, right shoulder, left thigh and right shin. Eades was sentenced to 10 years with a minimum period of seven. While in prison he has claimed he was attacked by another prisoner in Barwon jail and slashed with a box cutter. In October 2007 he began an action against the State of Victoria claiming damages for scarring.
On 10 January 1977 two young women, Suzanne Armstrong and Susan Bartlett, were killed at the house they shared in Easey Street, Collingwood while Gregory, Armstrong’s 16-month-old son slept in his cot in the back bedroom. Suzanne Armstrong was raped after her death and was stabbed 29 times. Susan Bartlett was stabbed 59 times but was not sexually attacked. The bodies were discovered at 9 a.m. on 13 January 1977 by neighbours. A friend of the girls later told the police he had been in the flat but had not heard Greg crying. He was not suspected of the killings. A Truth journalist was suspected but was later cleared by DNA evidence. (Tom Prior, They Trusted Men)
Name given to a group of Sydney identities including George Freeman, Lennie McPherson, Stan ‘The Man’ Smith, Abe Saffron and Karl Bonnette at whose Double Bay home in July 1972 a police officer observed a US mafia-style meeting. It was described by Mr Justice Moffitt as a ‘summit meeting of criminal minds’ and by the NSW police as ‘the boys playing cards’.
Convicted on 21 September 2007 of the killing of James Skoulidis, Greek-born one-time multi-millionaire and newspaper owner whose businesses had collapsed. Skoulidis was shot and killed on 5 August 2003 outside his semi-rural property at Kemps Creek, Sydney. The killer escaped in a blue and white fuel tanker. In April 1999 Skoulidis had tried to help George Giannopoulos when his throat was slashed at the Pariziana nightclub. He had seen the man’s killer and for some time it was suspected his death had resulted from this incident. However, on 21 September 2007 the mentally ill East was sentenced to 18 years with a minimum of 13 and a half to be served for his murder and other offences.
Sydney identity shot in April 1939 by Charlie Bourke whom at first he identified. Eastaughiffe then changed his story claiming that his attacker had been a bigger man than the greyhound trainer.
Sydney identity named in the coronial inquest of Dale Catherine Payne, contemporary of Lennie McPherson and Lou ‘Mad Dog’ Miller who attempted to organise a contract on him. See Gregory Jones.
Sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of Australian Federal Police Assistant Commissioner Colin Stanley Winchester, shot in the back of the head on 10 January 1989 as he parked in his driveway in Lawley Street, Deakin, Canberra. During the investigation the shooting was described as that of a professional, or a ‘very, very, lucky amateur’. For a time it was thought to be the former. Winchester had approved a scheme where a police informer would grow and manufacture one or more crops of marijuana and, when selling them, attract professional buyers who would then be arrested. The scheme was an abject failure. At first there were suggestions that Winchester had been shot because he was a crooked cop and conversely because he knew too much. Then it appeared that the lucky amateur theory was the correct one. Eastman, a former public servant who was seeking reinstatement and a campaigner against public and police corruption, saw himself as the victim of police harassment and, although a motive was never clearly established, the killing may have been in revenge for that.
Anti-social and difficult to deal with in prison, Eastman was attacked in Goulburn by sex offender Glen Wilson on Christmas Day 1998. Throughout his imprisonment Eastman has continued to challenge his conviction with a 1995 unsuccessful appeal to the full bench of the Federal Court and High Court of Australia. A two-year-long judicial review had brought him no joy. After many years of campaigning, Eastman secured a judicial inquiry which in 2014 recommended the sentence should be quashed and he should be pardoned. On 22 August of the same year, the Supreme Court of the Australian Capital Territory quashed the conviction and ordered a retrial. He was rearrested in February 2015. (Eastman v The Queen [2008] FCAFC 62; Roderick Campbell, Brian Toohey and William Pinwill, The Winchester Scandal)
Kidnapper along with Robert Boland of 20-year-old teacher Mary Gibbs and six pupils—the entire school—during music class at the Faraday Primary School near Bendigo, on Friday afternoon 6 October 1972, demanding a $1 million ransom. The kidnapping followed on the case of Graeme Thorne. The Government said it would pay the sum unconditionally and minister Lindsay Thompson said he would personally deliver the money. It was not necessary. When the kidnappers were absent, Mary Gibbs kicked out the door of the van and led the children off to safety. Boland, whom Eastwood always said was innocent, received 16 years and Eastwood a year less.
In December 1976 Eastwood escaped from Geelong jail and on 15 February 1977 kidnapped nine children and seven adults, some from Wooreen Primary School in South Gippsland, demanding a $7 million ransom. Recaptured after a high speed chase, he was sentenced to 21 years. In 1981 he was acquitted of the murder of rapist Glen Davies claiming self-defence. While in prison he completed a religious course run by Seventh Day Adventists and was paroled in 1990. Unfortunately within three months he was caught after a factory burglary and sentenced to a further 12 months’ imprisonment and his parole was revoked. He later wrote a book of his experiences. (Edwin Eastwood, Focus on Faraday and Beyond; Mark Read, Chopper From the Inside)
Pimp convicted of the manslaughter of Shane Dennis ‘Jock’ Rowland in North Fitzroy in May 1976. Released after three years, he returned to running massage parlours. On 17 April 1980 he was shot and killed in Rathdowne Street, Carlton probably by Sandy Macrae as a reprisal for a beating given to him by Ebert.
On 18 September 1988, along with Ronald Wesley Piley, Edds was sentenced to life imprisonment for shooting standover man Daryl William Hooker at point blank range with a .45 in Melbourne. The jury strongly recommended mercy. Piley was alleged to have said, ‘I shot him all right. Someone had to. He’s been going around too long iron barring people.’ The police agreed Hooker was a thief, bludger and standover man, vicious and quick tempered. At his trial Edds claimed the gun went off accidentally saying he only intended to have it out with Hooker. (The Age, 19 September 1988)
Medical practitioner, one-time owner of the Sydney Swans, and flamboyant entrepreneur with number plates such as SEXY, MACHO and SPUNKY, which at the time of his bankruptcy he listed as his No. 1 asset. He was convicted for conspiracy to pervert the course of justice and issuing hitman Chris Flannery with a medical certificate to enable him to avoid a murder trial. After his release he launched the concept of a series of 24-hour medical centres. De-registered in New South Wales in 1988 and in Victoria in 1992, from 1998 to 2004 Edelsten consistently failed in his applications to re-register as a medical practitioner in Victoria. In 2008 Edelsten still owned three medical clinics and was challenging the Federal Government’s Heath Department initiative to establish ‘GP Super Clinics’ claiming he has registered the word ‘superclinic’ as a trademark. See also Raymond Keith Roach. ( Australian, 3 May 2001; Herald Sun, 3 April 2007)
Arrested on 16 March 1985 after being found masturbating in his car outside a store in Albury, NSW, Edmunds was convicted of the murders of teenagers Abina Madill and Garry Heywood, who had disappeared on 10 February 1966 at Shepparton, Victoria. She had been raped and battered; he had been shot. After his arrest at Albury, Edmunds’s fingerprints were taken and matched to one found on Heywood’s car. Edmunds, who had been convicted of a series of rapes in the 1970s and early 1980s, received life imprisonment with no minimum. The nickname derived from Edmunds’ peculiar body odour. (Andrew Rule, Cuckoo)
Corrupt former NSW detective drowned in November 1986. In 1973 Edwards, the officer Reg Varley claimed had organised the kidnap and killing of his partner, was dismissed from the force and it was recommended charges be brought against him. None were preferred. In March 1986 he was charged with cultivating Indian hemp after 1100 plants were seized at his farm. In November that year, shortly before he was due to appear in court, his body, with hands and legs trussed and clad only in trousers, was found in the sea at Mackenzie’s Bay near Tamarama.
Pregnant woman sentenced to death with her lover Harold Percy Smith, and then reprieved with no possibility of parole for poisoning her husband William Henry Edwards with strychnine on 26 December 1938 at Koorainghat, NSW. Smith died in Goulburn in December 1948. Her release in December 1951 brought calls that Parole Board hearings should be made open to the press and public.
Convicted in September 2008 for the murder of her partner George Marcetta. Motivated entirely by greed, on 9 September 2004 she laced his dinner with sedative and then used almost 30 litres of kerosene to set fire to their house in Bellfield, Melbourne. She had earlier persuaded him to sign over his home, car and part of his business and to open joint bank accounts. She was sentenced to 24 years with a minimum of 20. In 2014 she was refused leave to appeal out of time against her conviction. In August that year the High Court upheld the decision. (R v Efandis [2008] VSC 271, 508; Efandis v The Queen [2014] VSCA 42; Efandis v The Queen [2014] HCATrans 182)
Corrupt 1960s NSW police officer who began his criminal career while still a serving officer. A fine swimmer, commended for his lifesaving, he was a member of the Police Underwater Diving Squad which was asked by the Customs Department to try to recover some gold ingots thrown overboard by Chinese seamen pre-empting a search. He duly located them but taped a number to a pylon for later personal recovery. After that he began smuggling watches, transistors and cameras that, Egan later claimed, were mainly sold to police officers. An unfortunate sale to a customs official blew the lid off that particular scheme and five officers resigned. It was then Egan was introduced to the possibilities of heroin smuggling by a man connected to the Painters and Dockers and he determined to make a million dollars inside three months and quit.
He learned of a potential customer, an ex-CIA agent in New York, borrowed money for home improvements, obtained compassionate leave to attend the funeral of an aunt in California and booked a flight to New York on Qantas with a kilo of almost pure heroin. He made $6000 from the run and now he was up and flying. Four months later he resigned from the Special Branch and began a full-time career organising drug smuggling.
On his first run in 1967 he wore a specially made vest and now all his couriers— officers on leave from the NSW police paid $2000 a run—were similarly kitted out giving the group the name the Corset Gang. Six months later with 20 couriers operating he was netting $80 000 a week. The couriers were sent to Hong Kong where they collected the drugs, which were flown to America via London, Tokyo and New Delhi. His downfall came after a tip off that there was to be a raid. He flew to Hong Kong to tell New Zealander Glenn Reid, in charge of buying from Chinese suppliers, to suspend operations. Unfortunately Reid kept two kilos and when he was arrested in Honolulu he dobbed in Egan and arranged to set him up. Egan skipped bail, went to England and was arrested in Paris three years later. Extradited to America he served just under four of an eight-year sentence. Back in Australia Egan retired to the Gold Coast where in 1978 he was fined $1500 for illegal gambling. (James Morton and Susanna Lobez, Gangland Australia)
Fish-shop owner Eliopoulos was attacked at his shop in Crown Street, Wollongong on 18 October 1943 and died five days later. The motive could not have been robbery because £150 was found in the shop. Eliopoulos was due to stand trial over a Comfort Fund tobacco rort and the likelihood is that he was killed to prevent him naming names. No charges were brought.
After the death of Dimitri Debaz, Elrich was doused in petrol in Mandarin Street, Villawood, Sydney and set alight on 8 February 2003 as part of ongoing Lebanese gang wars. He died a fortnight later.
About 7.15 a.m. on 15 December 1989 42-year-old Engers, a TAFE teacher with three Thai wives who had left one wife for her sister, was shot dead with a .22 rifle as he walked to his car parked in his driveway in Kennington Park Drive, Endeavour Hills, Melbourne. He had just returned from taking his legal wife to work. A week earlier a potential hitman had been offered $15 000 for the killing but had declined. In 2008 the police announced they believed the murder was linked to the seemingly unrelated killings on 14 March 1992 of massage workers Mary Lou Orton and Kim Wa Li, found handcuffed and stabbed in the Cathay Therapeutic Massage Parlour in Alexandra Parade, Fitzroy. In June 2008 a man was arrested and charged with Engers’ murder. In 2010 Necdet Karakas was sentenced to a twenty-year term. The prosecution alleged the killing carried out as a contract by Karakas had been over a property dispute. (Sunday Age, 6 April 1997; R v Karakas [2010] VSC 16)
New Zealand OMCG which fell into disrepair in the 1990s after a war with the Road Knights and the conviction of associates for the gang rape of a 14-yearold, leading to sentences of nine and half years. In the late 1990s the Epitaph Riders joined a federation of OMCGs, later named at their instigation the A Team. Following troubles with the Tax Office the club was sold to a former member for NZ$1. The Riders’ heavily fortified club house in Addington became derelict. (Roberts v Police [1996] 10 CRNZ 451; Gideon Tait, Never Back Down; Police News (NZ) Vol. 39, No. 3, April 2006)
Mongrel Mob leader killed when he fell asleep on 15 August 1981 while keeping watch expecting a raid on their headquarters in Brown Street, Wellington. The trouble had come after a Mongrel player had been recruited by the Eastern Suburbs Rugby League Club that had links with Black Power. Both the club and the Mongrels drank in the Tramway in Newtown. The captain of the Eastern Suburbs had his car smashed and another player was beaten up. While keeping watch in an ambulance for a revenge attack Epps awoke to find the windows being broken. He released the handbrake and the van rolled down Brown Street after which he tried to escape on foot. Badly beaten, he died three days later. In May 1982 14 members of the Eastern Suburbs club—11 Maori, two Samoans and a Pakeha—received sentences of 18 months for manslaughter. All were acquitted of murder. (Mike Bungay and Brian Edwards, Bungay on Murder)
Hanged for murder with Charles Hagen in December 1905.
English-born drug dealer Eustace was shot on 23 April 1985 during Sydney’s drug wars as he sat in his gold Mercedes Benz in Arncliffe. Eustace, who ran Tony’s Bar and Grill in Double Bay, had allegedly ordered the May 1978 murder of heroin addict Dale Catherine Payne. Dying on the operating table, he refused to disclose the identity of his attacker. He was due to stand trial on a charge of conspiring to import $8.5 million of cannabis. His killer was thought to be Chris Flannery acting on the orders of George Freeman.
In the autumn of 1914 Samuel ‘Jewey’ Freeman, Ernest ‘Shiner’ Ryan and Kate Leigh began to plan what would be one of NSW’s most famous crimes of that and other decades, the Eveleigh Railway Workshops robbery; an attack on their factory in Redfern. It was the first time a getaway car was used in Australian criminal history.
The robbery was executed on 10 June, four days after night watchman Michael McHale had been shot in the face by Freeman during a robbery at the Paddington Post office in Oxford Street. A bystander, Edward Heagney, was also shot but both survived. Now, two Eveleigh employees arrived on a horse and cart at the factory bringing the payroll which totalled slightly over £3300. They unloaded the first chest of money and, as they were taking a second, Ryan drove up with Freeman in the passenger seat of an old grey car. Freeman put a gun to the head of one employee Norman Twiss and threatened to blow his brains out. The second chest was loaded on the car and the pair drove away. The Herald was both enchanted and able to use the robbery as a stick with which to beat the administration:
The Eveleigh holdup is surely unique of its kind in Australia. For audacity of conception and cool effrontery of execution it could hardly have been surpassed [but had there been a policeman about, the robbers may have been apprehended]. We commend to the Government’s notice the increase of the police force.
Unfortunately for Freeman and Ryan the number of the car had been taken. Even more unfortunately they had not bothered to steal a car. They had used one belonging to Arthur Tatham from Castlereagh who had duly reported it stolen, but when interviewed by the police he seemed to know much too much about things. The man in charge of the payroll also told the police that Twiss had been unusually cool. Indeed it seemed almost as if he had expected the attack. Then Freeman was shelfed. He delayed too long and on 24 June the police arrested him as he was boarding the Melbourne Express. Sensibly he had avoided using the Flinders Street station but he was picked up at Strathfield in the suburbs. He claimed that he had been at the races on the day of the robbery but was charged.
Which left Shiner Ryan very much on his own. For the moment it went well enough. He stayed in Sydney to send his share to his friend Sam Falkiner in Melbourne but then things began to unravel. First Falkiner decamped to Tasmania with the takings. Then, when Ryan, who had gone to Melbourne to collect his share, found what had happened he told his girlfriend who, with reward money ringing in her ears, went to the police.
He was surrounded in a house in Albert Park and £600 was found in a glass jar stuffed into the chimney. It was all that was ever recovered. Ryan was returned to Sydney where he was charged along with Freeman, Twiss and Tatham. The quartet went on trial at the Central Criminal Court, Darlinghurst in September that year with mixed results. Twiss was acquitted and Tatham received a mere three months as an accessory.
Ryan’s defence was hopeless. It was argued that the reason he had left Sydney was that he had seen a drawing in the paper of one of the robbers which resembled him and because of his criminal record knew no one would believe him. Totally unable to explain away the money in the chimney, the evidence of an informant and the fact he had admitted to the crime on his arrest, he was right. He received 10 years and tried to slash his wrist on his first day in Parramatta.
Jewey Freeman’s alibi changed slightly, principally because the races were not run in the morning. No, he had been in bed with Kate Leigh. She was called to give evidence and confirmed it was correct. In fact they had gone ice-skating together at the Exhibition rink and then gone back to Frog Hollow where they had stayed in connubial bliss for two days.
Again the Herald was taken in:
Her admission, made in public and on oath, a woman’s confession of her own lack of virtue, would have gone far to swing the scales in favour of Freeman. It seemed unbelievable that a woman would publicly parade her shame unless the facts were correct.
But, as she would prove time and again, Kate Leigh was not just any woman. Nor did the jury believe her and Freeman. He received 10 years to be followed immediately by a life sentence for shooting McHale. (SMH, 11 June 1914)
Returned soldier and bread delivery man convicted of the murders of two American servicemen in Brisbane, Lt Allan C Middleton on 11 January 1945 and Chief Petty officer John Daniel McCollum 14 days later. Middleton was shot in a public lavatory and McCollum when he opened the door of a house he was renting in Alderley. He managed to tell the police of a ‘red bread van’, which was traced a few streets away. Questioned, Everest claimed he believed he was to be poisoned by Americans and his were pre-emptive strikes. ‘Yes, I shot him. The Yanks have been after me for some time.’ He was sent to a mental asylum.
On 30 August 1990 Evers shot and killed Thomas Cullin and four others with a 12-gauge shotgun at a housing commission flat in Surry Hills, Sydney. He maintained that it was because Cullin had called him a dole bludger but it may have been that another victim, Evers’s half-sister Michelle Coleman, who was also his lover, was threatening to leave him.
66-year-old deported to England in 2005 after serving a total of 37 years for a series of child sex attacks dating back to 1985 when he sodomised a seven-year-old boy.