A Kate Leigh supporter in the Darlinghurst Razor Wars, in the early evening of 17 July 1929 Gaffney gave Frank Green, a Tilly Devine man, a good kicking in Nicholson Street, Woolloomooloo. Shortly after midnight Tilly’s husband Jim Devine heard someone trying to climb the fence and shouted a warning from the balcony of their home at Torrington Road, Maroubra. His revolver had been forfeited by the courts and because he feared trouble he had borrowed a .303 from a friend. As Gaffney announced he had plenty of friends with him yelling, ‘I’m out for the blood of you bastard’, Devine shot him in the chest as well as hitting Walter Tomlinson, Kate Leigh’s bodyguard, smashing his arm. The ‘plenty of friends’ seems to have been something of an exaggeration. A third man escaped in a taxi shortly before the police arrived and Gaffney died on the pavement. Decently, he refused to say who had shot him and in turn Devine refused to prosecute Tomlinson for the home invasion. Devine was, nevertheless, charged with the unlawful killing of Gaffney. Three months later he was acquitted on the grounds of self-defence. (Larry Wright, Razor)
Convicted of the 1 February 1968 robbery at the National Bank, Stratford, Victoria when he and his de facto Lorraine Kleehammer, disguised as a man, held up the manager and his family for four hours at gunpoint forcing him to take them to the bank. Gair received 15 years with a minimum of 11 and a half years to be served. On 24 October 1969 he escaped from Pentridge with David Gawned, hiding under a pile of boxes in a van. Until his recapture the bank manager received police protection.
Prominent Melbourne lawyer who appeared for the cream of Melbourne’s underworld including Billy Longley as well as the Painters and Dockers Union in the Costigan Royal Commission. He died on 12 October 2005. He had been suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. (Frank Galbally, Galbally for the Defence)
The highly popular gambler and racehorse owner Galea, then in his early 30s, first came to prominence at the end of World War II, working in Sydney’s illegal baccarat clubs with Henry Stokes and Siddy Kelly. In 1974 Galea opened his Double Bay Bridge Club in New South Head Road, Double Bay. The premises, previously the home of a small gambling club for immigrants, had been wrecked by fire the previous year and Galea re-kitted it sumptuously. Two years later he opened the Telford Club at Bondi Junction. In 1977 he won 1st prize in the NSW lottery and later shared 3rd prize in another. The wins enabled him to bet bigger and then buy his first horse, Sugarfoot. In the 1970s he was said to be paying $5000 weekly protection money to the very top of the NSW police to allow his baccarat games to continue unmolested. A number of croupiers in his clubs also worked in the drugs trade. He died in August 1977 following a heart attack. (David Hickie, The Prince and the Premier)
On 13 December 1979 Gallagher was one of nine prisoners in a mass escape from Darlinghurst Court when a constable was overpowered and his keys snatched. Gallagher, Kevin John Williams and Terrence Goodwin kidnapped the driver of a yellow van minutes into their escape so avoiding a dragnet around Darlinghurst. They ordered the driver to take them to Canterbury where he was released unharmed. Gallagher died in the Jika Jika fire on 29 October 1987. He had already confessed to the murder of fellow prisoner Edwin James Lloyd for which Kevin Gallagher had been convicted.
Sentenced to 16 years in August 1977 for shooting at police officers during a chase in March 1976 in Newcastle involving Roy ‘Red Rat’ Pollitt. Wrongly convicted of the 1983 murder of fellow Parramatta prisoner Edwin James Lloyd, Gallagher continued to maintain his innocence and in June 1994 he was granted an inquiry. 10 years earlier in November 1984 Arthur Bernard Gallagher had appeared at the Court of Appeal to say that he had killed Lloyd but his evidence had not been accepted.
Killed as he tried to rob a Solo Service Station in Beach Road, Sandringham, Melbourne on 4 October 1987, Ganas, who was already on bail for robbery, grabbed the attendant and was rifling the till when he was shot by two police officers who were lying in wait.
Named by Pasquale ‘Peter’ Barbaro as a Melbourne Calabrian boss thought to have ordered the murder of Vincenzo Angilletta in 1963, Gangemi died of leukaemia in July 2008 at the age of 86. He had served alongside Liborio Benvenuto for 20 years. Buried in a gold-plated coffin, Gangemi’s funeral was attended by 400 mourners, including Mick Gatto.
Born outside the milieu but a standover man for 20 years and later designer drug dealer, Gangitano, who liked to be known as the Robert de Niro of Lygon Street, had no visible means of support. In his will, however, he gave his occupation as ‘Gentleman’. The one-time leader of the so-called Carlton Crew he was regarded as unstable. ‘One minute he’d be charming, polite and the next he’d go psycho on you. He’d drive along the pavement knocking over dustbins,’ recalls one former friend. In 1991 Gangitano believed that a contract had been taken out on him to be executed by ‘Chopper’ Read, of whom he was in mortal fear, and he retreated with his family to Italy. He only returned when Read was jailed in October 1992 following his conviction for the attempted murder of Sid Collins, a biker and drug dealer in Tasmania.
Regarded as involved in horse race fixing and having connections with West Coast identities, at the time of his death, Gangitano was awaiting trial on a charge of affray but he had faced far worse legal challenges. He was also confidently suspected of the killing of the popular gangland figure Gregory Workman on 7 February 1995 over gambling debts. It was a matter cleared up with the able assistance of Jason Moran. Three years later Gangitano had other problems. He had fallen out with the Moran brothers who now controlled a large part of the drug dealing on Lygon Street. On 16 January 1998, by now regarded as out of control after he had bashed a number of cleanskins, including some women, in a King Street nightclub, he was shot and killed at his home. Jason Moran and Graham Kinniburgh were named at the coronial inquest. (John Silvester and Andrew Rule, Leadbelly)
On 1 July 1975 Julie Garciacelay, 18-year-old American-born receptionist for Truth and Oz, disappeared from her flat where she lived with an older sister in North Melbourne. When her sister returned to the flat late that evening she found slashed underwear, a blood soaked towel and a missing knife. Suspects included career criminal John Joseph Power, a Painter and Docker and one-time gunshop owner with a conviction for rape, and Tommy Collins, a fairground boxer, as well as John Grant, a Truth journalist, all of whom had visited her on the night she disappeared.
They claimed that she had gone out to make a telephone call and had not returned. Their stories did not wholly tally but no charges were brought. In 2006 the police reopened the case and invited another former Truth journalist to wear a wire during conversations with Grant. He declined. Grant also had the misfortune of being in the next door flat when the Easey Street murders took place. He was later cleared of those murders through DNA evidence. Collins died in 1998. In 2003 Power was said to be too ill to be questioned further. (Brian Hansen, The Awful Truth)
Young Melbourne lawyer Zarah Garde-Wilson, then with the firm Pryles and Defteros, became involved with the newly released murderer and standover man Lewis Caine in a relationship a court was later told was ‘one of integrity and love’. They both began to study reiki with a view to becoming qualified healers. When Caine was killed she unsuccessfully applied to have his sperm taken and frozen. Garde-Wilson had grown up in rural NSW and took a law degree at the University of Western Australia. When in 2004 George Defteros voluntarily surrendered his practising certificate after being wrongly accused of conspiracy to murder Carl Williams, Ms Garde-Wilson established her own firm in Little Bourke Street using her name and that of her dead lover Caine. She took with her a clientele that would be the envy of many a criminal lawyer. The dangers of acting for the underworld have never been clearer than in the case of Ms Garde-Wilson, who was inexorably dragged into a completely untenable position over the death of Caine and paid a heavy penalty. On 7 October 2005 she was called by the Crown to give evidence in the trial of Evangelos Goussis and another man for the murder of Caine. She had apparently spent the afternoon before his death with him and knew of his finances. Con Heliotis QC, who appeared for her, said that she would claim the privilege against self-incrimination and, if that was not successful, she would stand mute and take whatever the court meted out: ‘I tell your Honour that Ms Garde-Wilson is frankly terrified for her life’. She had applied unsuccessfully to enter the witness protection program. She was convicted of contempt of court and her conduct reported to the Law Institute. Shortly afterwards, she deleted Caine’s name from the firm’s title. Her practising certificate was withdrawn in July 2007, a decision she appealed. In June 2008 charges of lying to the Australian Crime Commission were dismissed. Her problems did not stop her maintaining a very substantial practice with some of the cream of Melbourne criminals such as Carl Williams and his wife Roberta.
Further misfortune befell her when on 30 April 2008 during a routine search of her car at the Metropolitan Remand Centre, Melton, 100 needles and 125 syringes were discovered. Garde-Wilson explained these were for her boyfriend who took steroids. In July 2008 the Law Institute dropped their objections and re issued her with a practising certificate. In December 2008, she gave birth to a daughter, Samantha. In 2010 she gave birth to twins. (The Age, 22 November 2005; Daily Telegraph, 4 May 2008)
29-year-old pedophile convicted on 9 July 1993 of the rape-murder of nine-yearold Ebony Simpson, abducted on 19 August 1992 as she walked from the school bus to her home in Arima Road, Bargo, south-west of Sydney. Garforth later drowned her, tied in fencing wire, in the Wirrimbirra Sanctuary. Sentenced to life imprisonment, never to be released, Garforth abandoned his appeal against his sentence. During his years in custody he has claimed unsuccessfully for compensation for the beatings he has received in jail from other inmates. In 1996 Ebony House was established as a sanctuary for the victims of violence. (R v Garforth, SCNSW 9 July 1993)
Sydney nightclub sprayed with bullets in 2006 after its owners replaced Nomad bikers as security guards.
48-year-old former Sydney psychiatrist and excellent pistol shot who allegedly killed South Australia’s director of mental health, Dr Margaret Tobin, as she left her Adelaide office on 14 October 2002. Gassy had been Tobin’s superior at Sydney’s St George hospital until she wrote a letter to the NSW Medical Board expressing concern about his work. The prosecution alleged that much of the preparation for the killing had been with the aim of outclassing the forensic teams but SA CSI ballistic experts provided some of the most damning evidence against him. Sentenced to life imprisonment with a 34-year non-parole period, in May 2008 Gassy was awarded a retrial by a 3-2 decision of the High Court, which held that the trial judge had not put his defence properly to the jury. In May 2009, Gassy was again convicted after a 47-day retrial. The jury took less than four hours to return an unanimous verdict.(Gassy v The Queen [2008] HCA 18; The Australian, 13 December 2007; Adelaide Advertiser, 24, 25 September 2004, 14 December 2007)
Victorian executioner whose first hanging was of James Ashe on 21 August 1876. Gately’s career was short-lived. In October that year he was convicted of the malicious wounding of a carter, James Walsh, at the Melbourne Botanical Gardens. He knocked Walsh down with a piece of wood and then bit him. He claimed Walsh had called him a loafer. He received three years’ hard labour and was succeeded by Elijah Upjohn.
Former heavyweight professional boxer, the Cole Royal Commission into the Building Industry described Gatto as a standover man, the last man standing of the once powerful Carlton Crew. Regarded as a great fixer—he preferred ‘industrial consultant’—Gatto reputedly charged a fee of $5000 to sit with him at his usual table at La Porcella in Carlton. An early girlfriend of his recalls, ‘He had beautiful skin and eyes. He was gorgeous, dressed in alpaca jumpers. He had the best style I ever saw on any man. Very old fashioned with perfect manners. Everything had to be done with “respect”. He took care of things with one phone call.’
In May 2005 Gatto stood trial for the murder of Benji Veniamin who died after what has been described as ‘an altercation’. As he waited for the police Gatto apologised to the restaurant owner for the undoubted inconvenience caused by the shooting. Now prices were rising on the street if not in the restaurant, which closed shortly afterwards. It was said the price on Gatto was $400 000.
Defended by Robert Richter QC, Gatto maintained that it was Veniamin who had attacked him in a back room of the restaurant and that while they struggled five shots were fired from Veniamin’s gun, which Gatto had managed to turn on him. An expert witness, Dr Dodd, agreed that it was difficult to determine individual reactions to particular injuries and that even people shot in the brain could remain active for a brief time. This produced the unkind comment in Melbourne Underworld News that since ‘Ol’ Benji was brain dead from birth’ this was a difficult call to make. Gatto was triumphantly acquitted and after the trial his wife Cheryl told journalists, ‘An innocent man has been vindicated and we couldn’t be happier’. Later banned by Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Christine Nixon from the Crown Casino and Victoria racetracks, Gatto commented, ‘She’s saved me a fortune’. (Melbourne Underworld News, 17 May 2005)
Sydney-born parliamentarian and criminal lawyer in both senses of the word, Gaunson defended Ned Kelly. The in-house lawyer for John Wren and legal adviser to the brothel owner Caroline Baum, known as Madame Brussels, he was no doubt her client as well. He believed that a man should get drunk once a month for his health’s sake and was said to overdo his own maxim. It was said of him that he might have been bound for greatness but for ‘his utter instability, egregious egotism, want of consistency and violence of temper’. He boasted he had cheated Pentridge of more deserving tenants than any other practitioner in Victoria. The prototype for the corrupt Davey Garside in Frank Hardy’s Power without Glory, he died in January 1909. (Australian Dictionary of Biography)
Executed on 6 April 1844, Gaven was the first white man to be hanged in Western Australia after being convicted three days earlier of the murder on 21 February of George Pollard by hitting him with an adze. English-born Gaven, who had been in the Parkhurst Boys’ Reformatory in Hampshire, had arrived in October 1843 being employed as a farm boy.
Apparently happily married, Geer, a successful Hobart businessman and trade unionist, was shot on 7 August 1953 on the then Montrose Road near Glenorchy City and killed by five shots from a .25. His car had been set alight on Queen’s Domain near the city centre. Geer had as a mistress the ex-wife of a hotel licensee, who was also in a relationship with a standover man and another in the blackmail trade. A well-known criminal who lived nearby produced a rock solid alibi. The inquest on 5 March the next year produced an open verdict.
Convicted in 1983 mainly on the evidence of four jailhouse snitches of the murder of 10-year-old Louise Bell, abducted from her parents’ home in Adelaide on 4 January 1983. His conviction was quashed on 12 April 1985 with Chief Justice King labelling the informants as ‘unreliable and untrustworthy witnesses’. No retrial was ordered. (R v Geesing [1985] 38 SASR 226)
Lebanese-born Sydney identity George was convicted in the Rex Jackson bribery scandal and sentenced to five years with a minimum of three years and six months to be served. In 1988 a conviction for corruption with Superintendent Ronald Ralph was quashed by the Court of Appeal. In 2001 he was sentenced to four years with three to be served prior to parole for his leading part in supplying not less than a commercial quantity of amphetamines. At the time George, then aged 64, was suffering from a serious heart condition as well as other medical problems. His de facto Penny Rompel, a woman with no prior convictions, who had cared for him for the previous 15 years and had been dragged into the conspiracy by George, received three years with a minimum of two years three months to be served. (R v George [2002] NSWCCA 419)
St Kilda standover man and street level heroin dealer, Stuart Lance Pink, was shot and killed on 11 March 1995 by Georgiev as a revenge for stealing cash and heroin from his friend Tom Juricic. Georgiev received 20 years’ imprisonment with a minimum of 16 to be served. He had been a hard-working fork-lift truck driver until in 1989 he met a prostitute and heroin user after which, although he tried to wean her off the habit, he began to deal in drugs himself. (R v Georgiev [1999] VSC 556)
Convicted of November 1997 murders with Bruce Malcolm Harrison.
South Australian bank robber, see Peter Patrick Clune.
A 59-year-old former American television actress in the process of applying for Australian citizenship, Germain was found dead in her Darlinghurst flat in April 2006 under a heap of household equipment including curtains, a foot spa and a construction worker’s hard hat. A blue clothes pin had been attached to her genitalia. She had been in the habit of letting young sex workers and drug users stay with her. One Ice addict who claimed to have found the body stayed with it shooting up for several days. Germain had told friends she felt she was in danger from a young prostitute and wanted to leave the area. Four persons of interest were named at the inquest held in July 2008 but when it was concluded in November the coroner was unable to make a finding whether she had been killed or had died of natural causes. He ruled there was not enough evidence against any of the four to refer the case to the DPP.
Powerlifter, bouncer and drug dealer known for his bad temper. Shortly before his killing, Germanos had administered a beating to a boy connected to a well-known crime family. As a result his death was almost inevitable and came when he was shot near a playground swing on 22 March 2001, when he went to a meeting in a park in Armadale, Melbourne. In 2014 police said they believed that his murder was linked to the 9 September 1999 killing of Dimitrios Belias, who was shot in an underground car park in St Kilda. Belais’s business partner Milorad Dapcevic disappeared five days after that murder. (Paul Anderson, Shotgun City)
Kings Cross identity shot dead in June 1989 in the Sweethearts Coffee Lounge, See Arben ‘Benny’ Puta.
Repeat prison escaper. His escape on 16 November 1981 from Pentridge, where he was on remand for the murder of Stephen Kenneth Haines and the armed robbery of a Hampton bank, was regarded as one of the most ingenious the authorities had seen. He died in January 2010 after being given a beating at his home in Seaford for pretending to shut a young boy in a freezer. For his March 1993 prison escape see Heather Parker.
The 1963 Royal Commission led by Sir Harry Gibbs into the Queensland police and prostitution at the National Hotel in Brisbane found that no call-girl service applied nor was there any police sanction for it. The limited terms of the Commission did not require him to consider the policing of prostitution or to examine corruption in the licensing and consorting squads. The failure of the Commission encouraged the corruption of the next 20 years. An unkind joke of the time was that Gibbs was ‘the only man in Queensland who could not find a tart in the National Hotel’.
Litigious phrenologist born Julia Gushkova in Odessa in 1872, who became known as Queen of the Fortune Tellers. In 1890 she married Danish seaman Christian Olsen in London. He was convicted of attempting to murder her and died during his 15-year prison sentence. In 1918 she opened rooms with Harry Gibson, who had appeared on the stage as the magician Zak, in the Eastern Arcade, Melbourne, from where she crucially claimed to have seen Colin Ross in the Gun Alley Tragedy when he was maintaining an alibi. In November 1925 she was awarded £100—she had claimed £1000—in a libel action against Truth, after the paper had claimed she had seen Alma Tirtschke going into Ross’s saloon and she could have saved the child’s life. Over the years she practised as a fortune teller, claiming she was giving ‘character readings’, and interfered in a number of cases as a psychic claiming to know where the bodies were to be found. In May 1951 she was awarded £1000 against the Herald, which had said she was a notorious fortune teller, then a criminal act. One of her seven sons became a journalist with Smith’s Weekly and featured in the Norman McIver libel case in 1930. (Madame Ghurka, The Murder of Alma T: A Challenge to TC Brennan; Kevin Morgan, Gun Alley).
Perth womaniser and socialite shot and killed in 1925 by Audrey Jacob.
In April 1965 at a stormy bankruptcy hearing, Sydney brothel owner Aileen Patricia Donaldson was questioned about her relationship with the Vice Squad sergeant Harry Giles who was alleged to have been her silent partner. It all ended in tears. On 8 April she went to jail for 14 days for ‘repeated prevarications’. Sir Thomas Clyne, the judge, described her evidence as a ‘farce from beginning to end’. She denied she had ever received a penny from Giles but other witnesses said he was keeping her to £50 a week because of her gambling tendencies. Giles attempted to resign from the force, retiring to his house in Gymea where he was reported to be under sedation and consequently ‘unavailable for comment’. His resignation was rejected and he was ordered to report for duty on 13 May. When he failed to do so a summons was taken out against him. Donaldson promptly took an overdose in a motel and ended up in hospital. Giles was later fined £10 for resigning from the force without permission. In 1964 Giles’s wife petitioned for divorce citing Aileen as the ‘party named’. (SMH, 4, 6, 12, 13 May 1965)
57-year-old Balmain grandmother, shot in bed while playing a hand-held computer game on 18 September 1997. It was thought she was killed in mistake for Maria Gioia, her son’s partner. A coronial inquest was told that Maria had been in a bitter dispute with her former husband. A Joseph Michael Agostino was charged with Gillard’s murder but, following evidential problems, the DPP dropped the charges. In November 2005 the coroner returned an open verdict. In March 2006 the reward for information in the case was increased to $250 000, then the second highest in the state’s history.
1940s Melbourne gambling identity, rival of Freddie ‘The Frog’ Harrison and Norman Bradshaw. In June 1947 Gilligan, along with an innocent bystander, was shot in Elizabeth Street by Harold Newman, a then cleanskin friend of the now dead Leslie ‘Scotland Yard’ Walkerden. The previous night Gilligan had set fire to Newman’s car. Now Newman effectively called Gilligan out and a meeting was arranged in Elizabeth Street. Gilligan, a man with convictions dating back to 1924, survived the shooting. Newman was charged with attempted murder, and when he stood trial he told the court that in the quarrel Gilligan had said, ‘I should have done you when I done Scotland’ and told him to get out of the state. He had only carried a gun because of his fear of Gilligan and the night he shot him, Newman thought he himself was going to be killed. The judge, sentencing Newman to two years’ imprisonment, took the view that while Gilligan was ‘a worthless person’ that did not entitle Newman to shoot him if he was unarmed.
Over the years Gilligan, who sometimes described himself as an industrial chemist, had further troubles with Harrison and Bradshaw, mainly over control of gambling. In the summer of 1949 with Bradshaw in his usual role as driver, Harrison opened fire on Gilligan and Bob Brewster, described as a miner but really a high-class forger, when they were in a taxi in St Kilda.
On 6 February 1950 with Bradshaw at the wheel of a grey Holden, Harrison again opened fire on Gilligan and Bob Brewster—often described as a miner but in reality a high-class forger—with a machine gun. Gilligan was hit in the right arm and was driven to Royal Melbourne Hospital. Eight bullets hit the gates of the MCG. The police were mobilised and the next day the Holden was found with its windscreen smashed with shotgun fire. Harrison and Bradshaw were duly rounded up and charged. Brewster was prepared to say that he recognised the pair as they opened fire, but Gilligan would not. The committal proceedings began on Friday 17 February and, to no great surprise, there was no Brewster. He surfaced the following week saying he had received threats that his house would be bombed if he did give evidence. Harrison and Bradshaw were duly acquitted after Harrison called an alibi to say he had been with his aunt. It was back to court again for the St Kilda shooting and once more Harrison and Bradshaw were acquitted. (The Argus, 24, 25, 26 July, 1 August 1947; Truth (M), 24 July 1947)
In May 1906 Melbourne Methodist reformer William Judkins turned his attention to lawyer and politician Samuel Gillott, whom, as chief secretary in the administration, he held responsible for illegal off-course gambling, claiming it was prima facie evidence of collusion between the administration and the police. As a result Sir Thomas Bent instructed Gillott to promote a bill which would effectively outlaw off-course gaming. On 29 November that year John Norton, the very often drunken editor of Truth, wrote an open letter alleging that Gillott had been financing Caroline Baum since 1877. Three days later Judkins disclosed that Sir Samuel held the mortgage on her brothel at 36 Lonsdale Street. Pleading ill-health, Gillott resigned from office and went to England where he remained for a year before returning to Australia. He died on 29 June 1913 following a fall down a flight of stairs when visiting cousins in Sheffield, England, fracturing his spine. His body was brought back to Australia for burial. He left an estate of nearly £300 000, much of it to charity. (John Norton, ‘Lechery and Lucre’ in Truth, 29 November 1906; JP Bean, The Sheffield Chronicles; Cyril Pearl, Wild Men of Sydney)
Old-fashioned con trick that has been worked over the centuries all over the world. The ginger game involves a girl taking a man to her room and, when he is almost completely undressed and she is partly clothed, in bursts her husband/ uncle/father/brother/probation officer etc. The role played will depend upon the apparent age of the girl. Money is then extorted from the man to assuage the family’s feelings or, if the girl is seemingly young, to pay for a period in a hospital to allow her to recover from her terrible experience. In recent times, a young boy often takes the girl’s role. See also Phyllis May Surridge.
Charged on the evidence of prison snitches, Glasby was acquitted in April 1990 of the murder of Phillip Delgado, stabbed to death in Goulburn jail on 8 January 1987. The case led to a commission of inquiry on the use of informers. On 11 June 1998 Glasby was sentenced to life imprisonment for the contract murder of John Theissl, found shot in a Range Rover at Georges Hall, outer Sydney, on 6 November 1994. The prosecution alleged he had been offered up to $50 000 by Theissl’s wife Carmela, who claimed her husband had been abusing their children. Glasby was sentenced to penal servitude for life. Glasby’s wife Suzette also pleaded guilty to the murder and received a sentence of 12 years with a minimum of nine to be served. She later changed a statement made at her sentencing and maintained Glasby had not been the killer but she would not name the man she had seen shoot Theissl. There was no evidence to support the allegation Glasby made against Carmela Theissl. (Report on Investigation into the Use of Informers, Volume 1; R v Glasby [2000] NSWCC 83)
A clairvoyant who claimed to have connections with the underworld, Glascott was convicted in June 2008 of the 10 July 2006 murder of Fairfield, Sydney solicitor David Robinson who was shot in an alleyway behind his offices. The prosecution’s case was that Glascott had a grudge against Robinson who had drawn up a divorce settlement contract that had been overturned. Robinson had gone to his offices to photocopy some papers for his son, found there had been a break-in and was shot when he went to investigate. Glascott, who maintained he knew nothing of the killing, was sentenced to 28 years with a minimum of 24 to be served. He left court saying he would appeal both conviction and sentence. In 2015 he was refused leave to make a special application to the High Court on the grounds he had not received a fair trial. (Glascott v The Queen [2015] HCA Trans 22)
Extravagant son of a wealthy pastoralist, during the morning of 25 September 1893 Glasson attempted to rob the old City Bank in Carcoar, west of the Blue Mountains. When he was surprised by the manager John William Phillips he axed him to death, as he did Letitia Frances Cavanagh, a friend of Phillips’ wife who was staying with them. Mrs Phillips, who survived, ripped the mask off Glasson’s face and recognised him. He variously claimed to know nothing of the robbery, that two men had forced him into it and that he needed the money for his wife and that he was mad. The prosecution claimed he had told his wife, whom he had married five months earlier, that he was wealthy and needed the money possibly to cover horseracing losses. When he was hanged in the new jail at Bathurst on 29 November 1893 he was said to be the calmest man among the participants and witnesses. His last words were ‘I die innocent’. (West Australian, 30 November 1893)
Between 1989 and 1990, English-born Glover, who came to Australia as a £10 Pom under the Migrant Resettlement Scheme, killed at least six elderly women. Baptised Walter, he changed his middle name in honour of the film star and liked to be known as ‘The Duke’. From 23 November 1989 he murdered the women, beating them with a hammer before strangling them with their own underwear and stealing cash from their handbags. On 19 March 1990 he was caught in the bathtub of his sixth victim, his mistress Joan Sinclair, attempting to drown himself. He told police he could not help himself and that the victims all bore an uncanny resemblance to his mother-in-law. On 30 November 1991 he was sentenced to life without parole and he hanged himself in Lithgow jail on 9 September 2005. His only visitor in prison had been a retired police officer trying to obtain information about the unsolved murders of four other elderly women. An unnamed Sydney woman claimed the body and paid for the funeral. (Brian Lane and Wilfred Gregg, The New Encyclopedia of Serial Killers)
One of the most controversial aspects of the Costigan Royal Commission report came from leaked extracts in the National Times, which implicated a prominent Australian businessman given the name Goanna as being involved in organised crime including drugs, pornography and murder. The magnate Kerry Packer came out to identify himself as Goanna, deny the allegations and denounce Costigan. His counsel, Malcolm Turnbull, condemned the Commission as an abuse of power and no charges were ever laid. In 1987 the then Attorney-General Lionel Bowen formally dismissed all allegations but there was still a question raised over the receipt by Packer of a cash loan of $225 000 from a bankrupt businessman in Qld. Packer had told the Commission, ‘I wanted it in cash because I like cash. I have a squirrel like mentality.’ For that reason he was code-named Squirrel in case studies by Costigan but the National Times changed the name to Goanna. Ironically, had Packer’s own magazine The Bulletin not interviewed Billy Longley there might never have been a Commission. Packer’s son James publicly denounced Costigan at his father’s state funeral in February 2006. Costigan replied saying that as a Royal Commissioner he investigated; he neither made allegations nor prosecuted. (SMH, 20 February 2006)
A master money launderer, for 13 years come rain or shine Goldberg visited a Sydney suburban branch of the ANZ Bank using a fake Jewish charity to launder around $42 million to Israel on behalf of other Jewish businessmen. In October 2000 Goldberg was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment. His wife Rita, convicted of social security fraud, was spared a jail sentence because of the difficulties under which she, as an Orthodox Jewess of the extremely strict Addas Israeli sect, would suffer in prison. She and their sons received suspended sentences. The Commonwealth DPP successfully appealed Goldberg’s ‘manifestly inadequate’ sentence which was increased to one of seven years with a four and a half year minimum (DPP C’th v Goldberg [2001] VSCA 107; Paul Barry, ‘Dirty Money’ in SMH, 14 October 2000)
On 10 July 2002 Michael Goldman attempted to kill Alexander Kudryavstev, shooting him in the stomach and then in the forehead on a suburban Melbourne nature strip. Amazingly Kudryavstev, who was wearing a tape recorder, survived. He and Goldman had been half of a four-man team that had committed nearly 150 burglaries in and around the city. When Kudryavstev wanted out it was feared, correctly, he would become an informer. Goldman claimed the killing had been ordered by Nik Radev, of whom he was in fear. On 27 May 2004 he was sentenced to 14 years with a minimum of 11 to be served. (R v Goldman [2007] VSCA 25)
Philippine-born 24-year-old North Ryde, Sydneysider. In September 2004 Gonzales was given life without parole for the 10 July 2001 murders of his parents Teddy and Mary Gonzales, whom he stabbed to death, and his 18-yearold sister Clodine whom he strangled and stabbed. He then went out to dinner with a friend. Before he left, as a diversionary tactic, he had sprayed ‘Fuck off Asians’ on the living room wall but it was through paint on his jersey that he was identified. He had been doing badly at university and his mother had frowned on a relationship he had with a girl, but his motive appears to have been to obtain control of the family monies. Soon after the deaths he began inquiring about buying a Porsche motor car. In 2004 two Sydney estate agents were fined $20 900 by the NSW Office of Fair Trading for selling the family home without disclosing it had been the scene of a triple murder. (Gonzales v Regina [2007] NSWCCA 321)
Acquitted in 1930 of the manslaughter of Lancelot Saidler.
Goodman, a 45-year-old North Islander mother of five, killed 83-year-old Mona Morriss during a burglary at her flat on 3 January 2005. During the investigation Goodman, who had 125 previous convictions for burglary, often the homes of elderly people, as well as for assault and aggravated robbery, admitted a series of burglaries and for those was sentenced to seven years. She contested the murder charge in which the prosecution alleged that she had been caught burgling the home of yet another elderly person and instead of merely pushing the frail Mrs Morriss out of the way, had bashed and stabbed her. She was convicted of the murder and on 7 December 2007 was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum pre-parole period of 19 years. In July 2008 her appeals against conviction and sentence were dismissed. (R v Goodman [2008] NZCA 384; Manawatu Standard, 8 December 2007)
A leading light in Sydney’s underworld in the 1920s, along with Phil Jeffs, Gordon was acquitted in the Ada Maddocks rape case. On 27 November 1929 he was sentenced to 10 years for an assault on a garage owner in Manley. The court was told he cultivated shop girls and then persuaded them to steal for him. He told the judge his witnesses in the rape case had been congratulated by the court, but this time the judge who described him as an ‘absolute menace to human life’ told Gordon ‘I’ve been considering committing all your witnesses for perjury’.
Drug courier for the Zampaglione drugs ring against whom he was due to give evidence when he was shot and killed near Lilydale airfield, east of Melbourne on 24 August 1980. After the death of Peter Russell the previous month, Gordon had declined the offer of being relocated in a safe house believing his best chance of survival was in maintaining his regular position in the drug scene. He was wrong.
In July 1946 Gore and Henry Charles Hunter were attacked by masked men and robbed when they went to an alley at the rear of Great Buckingham Lane, Sydney to buy cigarettes. Times changed and later Gore became a member of Sydney’s stand over gang the Toecutters. He was also a confidential informant for the corrupt Fred Krahe. Gore was thought to have been killed in the winter of 1972 by John ‘Nano’ Regan. Gore was last seen on 3 May walking with him in Darlinghurst. (Neddy Smith, Catch and Kill Your Own; SMH, 24 February 1988)
NSW jail within a jail opened in September 2001 to house prisoners thought too dangerous to mix with the general prison population. Its inmates have included Ivan Milat, Malcolm Baker and Michael Kanaan. The unit has also been designed to house mainstream prisoners to give them ‘special attention’, with rewards for good behaviour.
Armed robber, drug dealer, male prostitute and debt collector for Dennis Allen, Gouroff, who disappeared on 20 November 1983, was the possible killer of Greg Pasche who disappeared on 27 May that year. Allen was considered a prime suspect for the disappearance of Gouroff, said to be in revenge for the death of Pasche or even because he did not dispose of Pasche’s body properly. At an inquest in 1988 a protected witness Miss X gave evidence that she had seen Allen shoot him. It is a claim denied by Allen’s mother Kath Pettingill. (Adrian Tame, The Matriarch)
Former champion kickboxer and boxer in the Australian squad for the 1988 Seoul Olympics, the next year Goussis, then working in a nightclub, received 18 months over the attempted murder of Richard Bettoney, suspected of ripping off Goussis’s employers in a drug deal the previous year. A one-time close associate of Nik Radev, in May 2008 Goussis was convicted of the murder of Lewis Moran on 31 March 2004. He was also convicted of the murder of Lewis Caine and sentenced to 20 years with a minimum of 15 to be served. Shortly before it was to be heard in July 2008 Goussis abandoned his appeal against his conviction in the Caine case. In October 2008 Justice King asked Goussis’s counsel to argue why his client should ever be released from prison. In February 2009 Goussis was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum of 30 years for the Moran murder. (Gary Tippet, ‘Coulda been a Contender’ in Sunday Age, 13 July 2008)
NSW bank robber killed in 1982 by Lee Torney in a dispute over the proceeds of a series of bank robberies.
When they returned from Europe, some of the Kangaroo Gang such as Leo ‘The Liar’ Callaghan metamorphosed into the Grandfather Gang, which imported hashish in the early 1990s through Hervey Bay, some 150 km north of Brisbane.
In the late 1990s there were signs that the Grandfather Gang had resurrected itself in Qld. That or someone had studied their tactics and was copying those of the old Kangaroos. The aim was to obtain the attention of security workers when they delivered currency to offices in high rise buildings while other members of the team raided the vans. The diversionary tactics included fiddling with lift buttons and the staff being chatted up by good-looking girls, something which led the police to think fathers and daughters were working together. In a raid in Cairns on 19 April 1996 when the team was chased by security staff, they threw away the stolen satchels. These were then picked up by the female members including Rosa Salvucci, the de facto wife of 50-year-old Steven Levidis, who was eventually persuaded to give evidence against him. He had been sentenced in France in 1980 following a big jewel theft in Paris. Now members of the gang lived on his luxury yacht while they were casing the TNT courier van in Cairns from which they took $200 000 in foreign currency. In 2001 Levidis had his five-year sentence confirmed but the Court of Appeal declined to increase it as requested by the prosecution. (R v Levidis [2001] QCA 228; Sunday Mail (Brisbane), 17 June 2001)
Convicted with Henry Jones of the murder on 19 January 1903 of Samuel Long. The constable surprised them when, along with ‘Snowy’ Woolford, they were burgling the Royal Hotel in Auburn, Sydney. Woolford was allowed to turn King’s Evidence. Despite the jury’s recommendation for mercy, Grant and Jones were hanged on 7 July 1903. Jones’s neck was broken but Grant strangled to death. A subsequent medical report assured readers that he had immediately been rendered unconscious and suffered no pain. (J Fitzgerald, Studies in Australian Crime, Second Series; James Morton and Susanna Lobez, Gangland Australia)
During the evening of 4 February 1881 Australians Grant and Frederick Seymour aka William Smith, seamen from the Melbourne, which had docked in London, carried out a series of robberies and attacks in Edinburgh, Scotland, shooting a Robert Veitch and his sister Emily and clubbing James Dick, all of whom survived, as well as shooting at police sergeants William Arnott and Donald Reid. When captured, Seymour shot and killed himself. On 23 May Grant was sentenced to 14 years’ imprisonment. There was speculation in the British press that the men had, under other names, been part of the Ned Kelly gang. (James U. Thomson, Edinburgh Curiosities)
On 11 August 1946 Detective Constable Victor Ahearn of the NSW police went with DC Bowie to Long Bay jail to arrest Sidney Grant and Keith George Hope, suspected of breaking and entering after they had finished a visit to Grant’s de facto. On the way back to Daceyville police station, at Matraville Grant produced a gun and fired at Ahearn who was sitting in the back seat between the two men. The first bullet missed and he fired again killing him. Bowie stopped the car and tackled Grant, hitting him on the head with the gun, which had jammed. The pair then escaped. Later caught and charged with Ahearn’s murder Grant wrote a letter to his wife, ‘That’s how it is Mummy darling. He got in my way so I let him have it. As for the other fellow, well he’s lucky he’s not calling for the angels. Only for my rod jamming he would have been so he is a lucky pigeon. That’s all.’ Later he claimed the letter had been sent solely as bravado. The first trial aborted when a juror began sleep walking. At the second Hope was acquitted and Grant, who had known Ahearn for some 20 years, was sentenced to death but reprieved. (Truth (NSW), 15 September, 15 December 1946)
Wellington cannabis dealer who disappeared in 1980, see Michael Sneller.
Member of the Whitlam Labor government, regarded as the father of multicultural ism in Australia and for 40 years bagman for the Calabrian mafia. He was criticised over a February 1974 trip to Plati, birthplace of Robert Trimbole, where he used his ministerial discretion to grant Australian entry visas to three men who had either been deported or refused entry to Australia because of their criminal records. In 1980 he was acquitted of criminal defamation after allegedly asking a NSW MP to read out a document in Parliament implying that Barbara Mackay and her family solicitor had been responsible for the disappearance of her husband Donald. After his death in April 2005 it was claimed that he had used political pressure to halt an investigation into his mafia links. In 2007 a statue costing $72 000 was commissioned by the Labor administration to stand in Canberra.
The so-called Great Bookie Robbery took place on 21 April 1976 shortly after midday at the Victorian Club, 141 Queen Street, Melbourne. Built in 1880, the club was where the Victorian bookies would meet to settle up on the first working day after a weekend’s racing. Even though security was amazingly informal— three detectives would drop in to see things were all right and invariably they were—over the years the Victorian Club had been looked at by a number of criminals, including the celebrated robber James ‘Jockey’ Smith, and all had decided it was just too difficult. The raid was finally devised by Raymond ‘Chuck’ Bennett when he was serving a sentence in Parkhurst, a high security prison on the Isle of Wight. With his great friend Brian O’Callaghan, both members of the Kangaroo Gang, he was caught following a raid in London. The story is that during a period of home leave in 1975 Bennett took just that and returned to Australia to case the club premises before flying back to Parkhurst to complete his sentence. Like Bruce Reynolds, the leader of Britain’s Great Train Robbery, he had the brains to organise and the charisma to lead a team. He was regarded by ‘Chopper’ Read, himself no slouch, as not only being a top gang tactician but also ‘one of the Australian underworld’s foremost bank robbers’. However, just as there have been few, if any, success stories among the Great Train Robbers so, over the years, it was thought there was a similar jinx on the participants in the Great Bookie Robbery. Bennett, who had acted as a minder for Billy Longley in the waterfront war, put together a team of nine serious professionals and took them out of the city for a period of training away from wives and girlfriends and the capital’s snares and attractions. Bennett had learned from his time in English prisons, and his team copied the raids of Bertie Smalls and his London gang of bank robbers. His team included Painter and Docker, Ian Revell Carroll, who became the Quarter Master Sergeant, and Anthony Paul McNamara. The club was deserted every weekend and once Bennett took his team of six, with three back-ups, into the premises for a dress rehearsal.
When Bennett was satisfied the training had gone well and the team was ready, he chose the day. An armed guard was carrying what would be the increased takings into the club from 116 bookmakers at both the Caulfield and Moonee Valley meetings for the three-day Easter weekend’s racing. It was to be a quick in and out job.
On the day of the robbery, the money was delivered by armoured car and at midday a man arrived to say he had been called to repair the refrigerator in the second floor bar. At 12.07 he met with at least five accomplices, wearing balaclavas, dustcoats and overalls, in the stairwell. Armed with machine guns they burst into the settling room, tackled the armed guards and ordered the bookmakers to lie on the floor. Telephones were ripped out, bolt cutters were used to open up metal cash boxes filled with over one hundred calico bags with untraceable notes, variously said to total between $1.5 million and $15 million. The gang jammed the lift with the empty security boxes and in only 11 minutes the raid was over and the robbers were gone into the traffic in Queen Street. A reward of $70 000 was promptly offered. The next problem faced by Bennett was the disposal of the money. An earlier successful job had gone wrong when Peter Macari began spending like water his $500 000 from the ‘Mr Brown-Qantas’ hoax. The British Great Train Robbers had been trapped largely because of their inability to hide the large sums of cash they stole. The wiser Bennett had already made arrangements for the laundering and some money was invested through a Sydney estate agent. Other money went to Manila and some to Canada. However, some of the laundering did not go so well. Bennett’s mother, on a visit to a Melbourne solicitor, collapsed and when the paramedics undressed her they found some $90 000 in cash in her clothes. One theory about solving crime is to follow the money and a close friend of Bennett, Norman Leung Lee, who ran a dim sum restaurant, was arrested and appeared in court in the autumn charged with the robbery. The evidence against him was circumstantial. In the month after the robbery he had spent $13 000 on extensions to his house and had bought $60 000 of dim sum equipment. He was also said to have laundered money through his solicitor’s trust account. On 19 August he took $60 000 in a plastic bag to his solicitors saying he wanted to invest it for a friend. But when he was raided Lee remained as staunch as Bennett had expected him to be. The magistrate ruled that there was no evidence to link the money to the robbery and Lee was discharged. He was the only person ever charged in the case and shortly after his acquittal the squad investigating the robbery was dissolved. According to Phillip Dunn, who appeared for Lee, the money had been left on the club premises for up to three weeks before being collected by members of the team.
Between 28 and 30 May 1935, 34 lb of gold disappeared from the unguarded elderly safe in the brakevan of the Northern Express travelling between Alice Springs and Quorn. Another safe in another carriage which was guarded was untouched. A previous robbery in July 1928 had led to the conviction of two men, with all the money, buried in rabbit burrows or hung in oatmeal bags from trees, being recovered. This time, although there was speculation about insiders being responsible, with a duplicate key being used to open the safe, no arrests were made nor was any gold recovered. The company fined one guard 10 shillings and a second 15 shillings for carelessness. (Adelaide Advertiser, 31 May 1935)
Convicted in 1993 of the murder of his wife, shooting her five times at close range when the marriage was breaking up, Grech disappeared from his St Albans, Melbourne home on 19 November 2007 some two years after his release from prison. He had been running a loan shark business. In April 2008 his body was found wrapped in plastic in the bush off Chapman’s Road, Toolern Vale. In February 2010 author Douglas Robinson, who had been in debt to Grech, was cleared of his murder but found guilty of assisting an offender and received a thirty-month sentence.
Griffith builder who disappeared in January 1986. At the time Greco was facing charges of cultivating cannabis in Townsville. He was last seen alive in the company of Bruno Morabito.
On 1 December 1928 amid a series of bombings in Melbourne, the Greek Club at 188 Lonsdale Street was blown up. Superintendent John Brophy with his man Fred Piggott were in charge of the investigation and a number of arrests followed immediately. When the trial opened the following February the evidence against Timothy O’Connell, Stanley George Williams, Francis Delaney and the brothers Alexander and Norman McIver, was not that strong, relying mainly on informers and a disputed confession by Delaney. The defendants were seen together around 9.40 p.m. when the club was bombed. Alexander McIver then left them and reappeared with a parcel for O’Connell. They again separated and O’Connell and a man thought to be Delaney were seen to run out of the club shortly before the explosion. Williams and Norman McIver were acquitted and the others received sentences of fifteen years. Their appeals in April were heard by the full court, one of whose members had been the trial judge. One judge thought the evidence against Alexander McIver was insufficient but he was out-voted by his colleagues. The convictions and sentences were upheld and McIver was not released until February 1939. (Wendy Lowenstein and Tom Hills, Under the Hook; SMH, 13 April 1929)
Netherlands-born circus performer Green became the NSW hangman and official scourger after being convicted of theft at Shrewsbury Quarter Sessions and transported at the age of 22 in 1824. In 1828 he was appointed executioner after his predecessor Henry Stain died in his sleep. His salary was £15. 14. 2d. and for his own protection he generally lived within the confines of Darlinghurst jail. Overall he was thought to have hanged 490 people. His first execution was botched when the rope snapped while hanging highway robber William Smith on 24 March 1828. In October that first year he hanged 11 men in one execution.
His last execution was no more successful than his first. Already suffering from intoxication and mental instability, on 1 March 1855 Green became completely mad after hanging William Ryan who had disembowelled his wife. Shortly after, he was admitted to Tarban Creek Lunatic Asylum. (R & R Beckett, Hangman: The Life and Times of Alexander Green)
Standover man with female breasts tattooed on the outside of his right arm, and supporter of Kate Leigh in the Darlinghurst Razor Wars. Three months after the party thrown for Jim Devine’s acquittal for the murder of George Gaffney on the grounds of self-defence, Green was out for revenge on his friend’s behalf. On 9 November 1929 and admittedly by mistake, he killed ex-rugby league player and Leigh footsoldier Bernard Dalton as he and Walter Tomlinson, who had been the real object of Green’s attention, left Sharland’s Hotel in William Street, Woolloomooloo. Green, along with Sidney McDonald, went into hiding and Tomlinson, his arm now healed after his shooting by Devine, drove Kate Leigh in her Studebaker to Dalton’s spectacular funeral. Although, in a rare example of cooperation with police, Tomlinson gave evidence against Green, he was nevertheless acquitted.
By the end of World War II Green, who had fought Guido Calletti for so long and hard over the favours of Nellie Cameron, was reduced to working as a cockatoo for a Woolloomooloo SP betting shop on a Saturday while doing house painting during the week. He was now living with Beatrice ‘Bobbie’ Haggett, a saleswoman in a city department store, and he had acquired a disconcerting tendency to pawn anything within reach. In October 1965 she left him and he took up with a prostitute. In turn she left and in early April 1966 Bobbie Haggett succumbed once more to his blandishments and returned. He continued to be violent towards her. On 26 April he was squabbling with her while she was cutting up liverwurst with a 12-inch knife. A struggle developed and the knife went into Green just above the heart. She ran to a hospital for help but by the time it arrived he was dead. An autopsy showed there were eight old bullets in his body. Apparently he used to say you had to be unlucky to be killed by one. Haggett was later charged and acquitted. (Vince Kelly, The Shadow; Larry Wright, Razor; (Truth (NSW), 17 November 1929)
Chimney sweep convicted of the murder of Annie Wiseman and her 17-year-old niece Phyllis, who were found strangled on 12 November 1938 at their home in Glenroy, Victoria. There was evidence Phyllis had been sexually assaulted. Black trackers found bicycle marks in the gateway of the Wiseman home and footprints that matched those of Green. White hairs said to match those of Annie Wiseman were found on his clothing. Green maintained he had been drinking the evening of the killing and had slept in a paddock. He was found guilty after the jury had retired for five hours 50 minutes. Green’s execution was delayed until 17 April 1939 because of the government’s aversion to hanging a man during Easter week.
Dishonest Melbourne solicitor, once a partner in Shugg & Green and later Aroni Coleman, from whom he embezzled some $42 million belonging in the main to wealthy Jewish clients. It appears that he then invested part of it in Gem Mining Leo, a sapphire mine in Laos. In 1998 his body was found in his room at a Phnom Penh hotel. He had been hit on the head with a tile and then strangled. There was no sign of forced entry to his room and the local police concluded he knew his killer. The Victorian police indicated they would like to interview a Bangkok identity who had known Green back in Melbourne prior to the embezzlement. (Paul Conroy, Lawyers, Gems and Money: The Max Green Murder and the Missing Millions)
Arsonist and embezzler, founder of Western Women, a bank and finance house specifically for women. The company defaulted to the tune of $6 million of which nearly half was thought to have been appropriated by Greenburg. In an effort to destroy incriminating papers she burned a kerosene-soaked bin of papers, starting a bushfire at Gingin, WA. On 8 September 1992 Greenburg was sentenced to 17 years’ imprisonment following her plea to 55 offences. It was a sentence that upset feminists of the period. However, Greenburg had been made bankrupt in NSW in 1972 and again in SA in 1983. When the West Australian decided to make this public she had tried to obtain an injunction and later failed in a defamation action against the paper. (R v Greenburg [1993] 68 A Crim R 392)
Melbourne prostitute and one-time mistress of Squizzy Taylor with whom she lived as Mrs Elizabeth Taylor in Adelaide in 1914. During this time she took money from a John Conlon, which she passed to Taylor. Later she became the cause of the Fitzroy Vendetta.
Gypsy Joker biker, probable WA murder victim of Don Hancock in October 2000.
Victorian socialite Griffey gave a party on New Year’s Eve 2005 the day after which the rotting body of her estranged husband, 45-year-old Michael, was found covered in a tarpaulin in the garage at the family home at Pakenham, Vic. He had insured his life for $1.5 million and was involved with four women, at the same time as continuing a sexual relationship with Griffey. After Diane had been committed to stand her trial in September 2007, her daughter Cassandra told the police that it was she who had killed her father. She has not been charged. Charges against Diane Griffey were dropped in November 2008 on the grounds the case against her was too weak to proceed.
Convicted of the 26 December 1949 murder of 40-year-old mother of three Mrs Elsie May Wheeler whose throat he cut in a Hutt Street, Adelaide residential. He also assaulted her friend Lily King, whom he told, ‘Give me five minutes and I won’t cut your throat’. He was found the next day with his wrists cut. Police inquiries turned up a five-year romance between Elsie May and Griffin, which had resulted in him being named as co-respondent in her divorce suit. Griffin was hanged on 22 March 1950.
In 1867 Queensland Gold Commissioner and magistrate Griffin gambled away £252 worth of gold given him by Chinese miners. To retrieve his losses he joined an escort of gold valued at £8000 which included police officers Patrick W Cahill and John F Power. During the journey between Clermont and Rockhampton on 6 November he attempted to poison four officers and shot Cahill and Power, escaping with £4000 of the gold. Caught and convicted, he was hanged at Rockhampton on 1 June 1868. Eight days later his grave was broken into and the head severed from the body. At the time there was considerable interest in the phrenology of criminals—the Italian criminologist Cesare Lombroso believed that the shape of the skull determined a man’s propensity towards crime—and it seems that the exhumation was for scientific purposes. Despite a £20 reward the skull was never retrieved. Cahill and Power are believed to have been the first Qld officers to be killed on duty.
Much to the annoyance of many members of the local community, by the 1970s Griffith, NSW had come to be regarded as the marijuana growing capital of the state if not Australia. By then around 65 per cent of the population was of Italian origin, mostly from the Calabrian town of Plati, a known stronghold of the N’Drangheta or Honoured Society.
Situated 375 miles west of Sydney and 250 miles north of Melbourne, Griffith was founded in 1916 after the government dug irrigation canals that linked it to the Murrumbidgee River. Allegations have been made that Calabrian kidnap money flowed into Griffith and at the same time fortunes were made from the marijuana crops grown in the district, which has become one of the richest irrigation areas in Australia.
By 1974 some of the townsfolk were becoming worried about the massive crops being grown and liberal candidate Donald Mackay, then standing against Labor member Al Grassby, forced the local police into raiding a local farm. The grower received a derisory fine. Mackay then went to the NSW Drug Squad and a raid was made on a 35-acre farm. It was shortly after this that Mackay disappeared, killed on a contract put out by Robert Trimbole.
Since then there have been a series of internecine wars between growers, resulting in a number of killings and disappearances of men from the Griffith area, including Giuseppe Monteleone in 1982, Marco Medici in 1983, Rocco Medici and Giuseppe Furina in 1984, Antonio ‘Rocky’ Scevola in 1987, Nunzio ‘Norm’ Greco in 1986 and Antonio Romeo in 2002.
Innocent bystanders have not escaped either. In February 1974 pensioner Paddy Joseph Keenan was found drowned, three weeks after an agricultural inspector of the same name found a drug packing operation on a local farm, and the weighted body of Robby Joe Coulter was found in the Murray River in January 1989. (Roderick Campbell and ors, The Winchester Scandal; Colin McLaren, Infiltration; Alfred W McCoy, Drug Traffic; Keith Moor, Crims in Grass Castles)
Methodist minister in Omeo, NSW who came to the ministry late in life and who was accused in 1928 of poisoning his wife, Ethel Constance. He had been having an affair with Lottie Condon, the 20-year-old daughter of a wealthy local landowner. Ethel left home for six months and went to stay in Tasmania but returned on a Sunday night and died two days later on Tuesday 3 January, poisoned with a massive dose of arsenic. Defended by the blind barrister CR Maxwell KC, Griggs’ defence was that Ethel had committed suicide or that she had taken the arsenic to frighten him but overdid the dosage. The first jury disagreed and Griggs was acquitted at the second trial. Afterwards there was a report from a spiritualist that Ethel had killed herself to allow Griggs to marry Lottie. He did not do so. Immediately after the trial Lottie was whisked off by her father and the pair may not even have seen each other again. Later Griggs tried to enter the Presbyterian ministry under an assumed name and when that failed he disappeared from view. His account of the whole affair, which he believed made him a better Christian, appeared in Smith’s Weekly. (Eric Clegg, Return Your Verdict; Truth (NSW), 3 January 1928; Smith’s Weekly, 4 August 1928)
Most celebrated of the thallium poisoners before it was placed on the poisons list in 1954, diminutive Grills—she was 4’ 5”—killed four members of her NSW family, beginning in 1947 with her stepmother, and tried to murder another three. The rat poison had been administered in tea and cakes. Sentenced to death on 15 October 1953 at the age of 63 on one count of the attempted murder of her sister-in-law Eveline Lundberg, this was commuted to life imprisonment. She lived out her days in Long Bay, known by her fellow prisoners as Aunt Thally. She died following peritonitis on 6 October 1960. (J Holledge, Notorious Women)
One-time Sydney boxer who founded Thommo’s legendary Two-up school in 1910.
On 19 August 1986 nine-year-old Samantha Knight disappeared from Wellington Street, Bondi. Her body was never found but in August 2002 pedophile Guider, already serving 16 years for the abduction and drugging of a number of children, was convicted of her manslaughter and sentenced to a minimum of 12 years to run from June 2002. He claimed he had accidentally given her an overdose of Norminson to enable him to take indecent photographs of her. It was thought that Guider buried Samantha’s body in a park in an eastern suburb and later exhumed it before putting it in a construction site bin. (R v Guider [2002] NSWSC 756; Darren Horrigan, ‘Police Still Haunted by Samantha’ in SMH, 19 August 1996)
One time Acting Commissioner of the Qld Police who died in August 2006. Known as the last of the honest policemen, he once said ‘The rewards for dishonesty are greater than for honesty’.
On 19 October 2003 Gulyas and his Thai partner Duang ‘Tina’ Nhonthachith were killed at their weekend home in Sunbury, Victoria. His body was found on the sofa in front of a widescreen television and Nhonthachith on the floor in the same room. Both had died from gunshot wounds to the head.
Over the years the pair had been involved in a variety of businesses. At one time he had had a truck repair business and had worked in taxidermy. In the 1980s she had her own fashion line, ‘Tina’s Trends’. More recently they had been running a dating agency, Partner Search Australia, introducing Victorian men to Russian and Asian women, which some saw as a scam, taking thousands of dollars from gullible middle-aged men. They were also running a leisure centre in Sydney Road, thought to be an illegal underage brothel.
Gulyas, who was linked to Nik Radev and who had been heard speaking of the Russian mafiya, had been in the process of installing an elaborate security system at their home but at the time of their deaths it had not been completed. They had asked a workman to take their guard dogs to their weekday home in Coburg.
There were no signs of a break-in and it was thought they might have known their killer—almost certainly a professional—and invited him in. (The Age, 25 October 2003)
On Friday, 30 December 1921 the body of pretty 12-year-old Alma Tirtschke was found in the dead-end Gun Alley in Melbourne, part of a complex then known as the Eastern Market, a rag-bag of cheap shops, bars and curtained doorways which led to brothels. The girl had been raped and her body washed and the police, led by the experienced officers John Brophy and Fred Piggott, believed that this had been done to remove clues as to the killer’s identity. Along with his brother, Stanley, Colin Campbell Ross was the owner of a wine bar just over a hundred yards from where the body was found. The floor of the bar had been recently scrubbed but, although he was one of the first to be questioned about the killing, Ross seems to have been unconcerned. He gave the detectives details of an alibi saying he had been with a friend, Gladys Wain, and that after he had shut his bar he had seen her to her home before catching a train at Spencer Street station.
This was one of those cases in which the police relied heavily on the evidence of known criminals and people with a grudge against Ross. They were later to share in the £1250 reward put up by the Victorian Government and the Melbourne Herald. Ivy Matthews, who had been questioned previously, decided on 9 January that Ross had confessed to her and that she had seen a girl, whom she believed to be the victim, peeping out of a cubicle in the wine bar. Matthews, had been given notice by Ross three weeks earlier. Another witness was a prostitute, Olive Maddox, who also said she had seen Alma in the wine bar and that Matthews had told her to tell the police. While on remand, Ross was said by Sidney Harding, a cellmate, to have confessed to the crime, a confession overheard by another prisoner who also gave evidence. The witnesses were bitterly attacked by the defence, who accused them of giving evidence in the hope that a conviction of Ross would bring them the reward money. In his alleged confession to Harding, Ross had said he had given the girl three glasses of wine but no alcohol was found in her stomach. Ivy Matthews said he had told her he got ‘fooling about with her and had strangled her in his passion’, adding ‘I could have taken a knife and slashed her up, and myself too, because she led me on to do it’. Harding’s version was that Ross had said, ‘At six o’clock the girl was still asleep in the cubicle, and I could not resist the temptation’. Afterwards the girl called out and he went in to silence her and must have choked her.
There was no forensic evidence except for some hairs similar to those of the girl’s attached to a blanket. The forensic expert, Dr Charles Taylor, demonstrated how the individual qualities of hair—something now no longer regarded as an exact science—matched. There were no bloodstains on the blanket nor on the floor of the bar. There was evidence too that Ross suffered from venereal disease, but there was no medical evidence to show a transfer of the infection to the child. Ross’s trial, which began on 20 February, lasted five days. It was carried out in an atmosphere of almost total public hostility towards him but the jury took over 24 hours to find him guilty. ‘My life has been sworn away by desperate people. If I am hanged, I will be hanged as an innocent man,’ he told the court.
As is often the case, after the trial some witnesses came forward to support his story. One man said that he had been in the bar and the child could not have been on the premises without being seen by him. Another, a taxi driver, said he had heard a child scream. He had looked for the source but although he could not find it he was sure that the cry had not come from Ross’s wine bar. The Court of Appeal refused to hear the witnesses, and although Ross intended to petition the Privy Council in England he was hanged before he could do so. To his death Ross continued to protest his innocence, saying he had been framed by the Melbourne police. His detractors point out that he had originally told the police he had seen the girl when she was loitering in the doorway of Julia Gibson known as Madame Ghurka, a fortune-teller, and another unreliable witness.
Shortly before he was hanged Ross received a letter, ‘You have been condemned for a crime which you have never committed, and are to suffer for another’s fault. ... My dear Ross, if it is any satisfaction for you to know it, believe me that you die but once, but he will continue to die for the rest of his life. Honoured and fawned upon by those who know him, the smile on his lips hides the canker eating into his soul. Day and night his life is a hell without the hope of reprieve. Gladly would he take your place on Monday next if he had himself alone to consider. His reason, then, briefly stated is this: A devoted and loving mother is ill—a shock would be fatal. Three loving married sisters whose whole life would be wrecked to say nothing of brothers who have been accustomed to take him as a pattern ... It is too painful for him to go into the details of the crime. It is simply a Jekyll and Hyde existence. By a freak of nature he was not made as other men ... This girl was not the first ...With a procuress all things are possible ... In this case there was no intention of murder—the victim unexpectedly collapsed. The hands of the woman, in her frenzy, did the rest.’ The letter bore the postmark of a small country town. The writer was never traced.
After his death Ross was championed by his barrister, the former journalist TC Brennan who, until his death in January 1944, believed evidence would be forthcoming that would clear Ross. The reward money was shared out between the witnesses with Ivy Matthews receiving £350 and Harding £200. In 1963 Matthews died following a heart attack four days before she was due in court to answer charges relating to abortions. It was thought she was the last of the surviving witnesses.
On 10 August 1924 the body of 11-year-old Irene Tuckerman was found hidden in chaff bags at Khartoum Street, Caulfield in circumstances resembling the Gun Alley murder. Piggott investigated but no charges were ever brought.
Over the years the journalist Kevin Morgan worked tirelessly to establish Ross’s innocence and eventually, through DNA testing, he was able to show that the hairs found on the blanket did not match those of Alma. On 27 May 2008 the Victorian Government announced a posthumous pardon for Ross.
Alma’s death was not the only tragedy in the Tirtschke family. In January 1922 her father Charles Harry Tirtschke was accidentally shot and killed by his nephew near Maffra. (TC Brennan, The Gun Alley Tragedy; Kevin Morgan, Gun Alley)
In the aftermath of the Port Arthur massacre in which 35 men, women and children were killed on 28 April 1996, gun control became a huge issue in Australia. Martin Bryant never had a gun licence but had found it easy to collect an arsenal of five or more semi-automatic weapons. The Port Arthur massacre consolidated multi-party support for gun controls and the Federal Government introduced the Nationwide Agreement on Firearms—a uniform national firearms licensing and registration system and the ‘Gun Buy-back’, a compulsory surrender of semi-automatic weapons. The gun buy-back scheme resulted in over 250 000 weapons being handed in and restricted the use of automatic and semi-automatic weapons to law enforcement officers, the military, professional shooters and farmers with particular needs. Overall it has been no more successful than attempts at gun control in other countries.
Convicted on 27 May 1920 of the murder of Augustus Braithwaite, the postmaster at Ponsonby, NZ, who had been shot in the throat and stomach during a robbery on 13 March that year. Despite the efforts of the defence to exclude the evidence, the conviction was the first for murder in the country in which the prosecution relied wholly on fingerprints—Gunn’s were found on a cashbox and a revolver. After the jury’s verdict the judge commented that fingerprint evidence was vindicated, ‘if vindication were needed’. Gunn was hanged. (The Dominion, 28 May 1920)
At first a Western Australian OMCG offshoot of Hells Angels, whose members in turn came east, founding the Fourth Reich in Wollongong and the Black Uhlans in Brisbane and Melbourne. The Jokers probably now have the fourth or fifth largest membership of Australian biker gangs. Perhaps their most spectacular clash with the law was over the October 2000 shooting of William Grierson and the subsequent bombing of ex-Western Australian detective Don Hancock a year later.