Lady Caroline Lamb once said of Lord Byron that he was ‘mad, bad and dangerous to know’. This is not to be taken to imply that every person named in this book is indeed dangerous to know. On the contrary, many are innocent victims; some had crime thrust upon them and some are more foolhardy than dangerous.
In this collection of crimes, criminals and their victims we have concentrated on urban criminals, so, with the exception of Andrew George Scott, ‘Captain Moonlite’, who dabbled in urban crime such as cheque frauds, sadly we have had to omit the exploits of the bolters and bushrangers of the nineteenth century. There are already many comprehensive accounts of their lives, deeds and misdeeds.
As a general rule we have not cited the major newspapers that have covered cases on a day to day basis, unless there has been an in-depth or a much later article. A particular exception has been those stories in Truth, a highly popular scandal sheet, which published a number of editions each week in major cities. As a result a story that appears in, say, the Victorian edition will not necessarily have appeared in New South Wales or South Australia. Where possible we have given an edition in which the story can be found.
Victims who are associated with crime are generally listed under the names of their convicted killers. If there is no conviction their entries will generally appear under their own names. There are cross-references. There are exceptions where the case is well known under the name of the victim or the name by which it is known, e.g. The Pyjama Girl case. The names of most of the innocent victims appear in an appendix.
Particularly in the older cases, the spelling of the names of defendants, victims and witnesses varies considerably. We have wherever possible used the names as they appear in the Law Reports. A number of recent cases that might have been expected to be included are the subject of suppression orders. By the time this book is published there will have been the resolution of a number of these cases, along with acquittals and convictions, appeals allowed and dismissed, and suppression orders lifted. We will endeavour to update these in any future edition.
Some readers may think that their exploits, or those of their relatives and friends, have been overlooked. If they care to contact us we will also endeavour to include them in any future edition.
Our thanks are due first to Dock Bateson, without whose endless patience, research, help and guidance the book would never have seen the light of day and then, in strictly alphabetical order, to the late Jeremy Beadle, Keith Bottomley, Bill Bridges, Annie Brooks, Dave Cameron, Cinzia Cavallaro, the late Clive Coleman, Richard Costa, Nicholas Cowdery QC, Paul Delianis, Richard Evans, Kabita Dhara, Kerrie Douglass, Liz Filleul, Mike Hallinan, Amy Hickman, Angus Huntsdale (AGs, NSW), Lily Keil, Foong Ling Kong, Debbie Lee, Barbara Levy, Paul Lincoln, Billy Longley, Sybil Nolan, Mark Norman, Steve Plowman (NZ Police Association), Jim and Sherry Ratcliffe, John Rigbey, Russell Robinson, Adam Shand, John Silvester, Matthew Spicer, Anne Stanford (Vic SC), Billy Stokes, Adrian Tame, Matthew Tremby, Geoff Wilkinson, Sonya Zadel (NSW SC) and to many others who have asked not to be named. Our thanks are also due to the staff at the State Libraries and State Records Offices of New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Victoria and Western Australia, the Victoria Police, as well as the British Newspaper Library at Colindale and the National Archives, Kew, England.
Being dangerous to know does not necessarily mean a person is violent. As the Hong Kong judge Gerald Sparrow wrote in The Great Swindlers:
The swindler is not, as a rule, a thug. He will not blackmail. He will not murder. Your daughter is reasonably safe with him. He never carries a gun, only some misleading visiting cards, some forged letters and perhaps an extra passport or two and, frequently, a curious pack of cards. With these complicated but harmless bits of paper he sets out to rob you painlessly, until the last distressing extraction.
Dangerous to Know also includes thoroughly decent people—judges, lawyers, police officers and even police dogs whom it is, or has been, extremely valuable to know. It also contains a number of people who through their work or their day-to-day lives have unwittingly become involved in Australasian crime and criminals, often to their cost.