Chapter 14

The Assault on Laurie Tanner

Most street policemen will have experienced situations where a colleague does something stupid that forces the brotherhood to close ranks. The assault on Laurie Tanner in May 1998 has the hallmarks of being one of them. The weak investigation of this assault shows why police, especially those in internal affairs, shouldn’t self-investigate. Without access to the facts, journalists have implied that Denis Tanner was the assailant in this brutal attack on his brother, but this chapter exposes the true story.

•••

Laurie Tanner is a gentle man, innocent of life outside Mansfield. Like many men who have been farmers all of their lives, he lives in the sanctuary of his own world. He is traumatised travelling to the city. He won’t drive in Melbourne, and even catching a train would be a big deal because he’s never done it; the train stopped running to Mansfield fifty years ago.

Late at night on 27 May 1998, he went to the shearing shed at Preston, his farm in Howes Creek Road, Mansfield, on a sudden impulse to check whether he’d left a water pump running. He disturbed intruders, who cruelly bashed and stabbed him, punched a hole through his nose with a bull-punch and left him to die. The incident occurred six weeks after the Tanners had walked out of the second Jennifer Tanner inquest.

Earlier that night Laurie had been to his weekly Rotary dinner meeting at the Commercial Hotel in Mansfield. During the meeting he became concerned that he might have left a pump running at the farm, so he decided that he needed to check it before he went to bed.

After the meeting, he went with fellow Rotarians to a men’s health lecture at the local football clubrooms opposite his home. He walked there with Rotary secretary John Hanaker; on the way, he mentioned that he’d have to leave the health night early to go to the farm and check the pump. Hanaker responded that he too would like to leave early and asked Laurie to tell him when he was leaving so that he could hitch a ride back to his car.

As they passed Laurie’s home, he collected his four-wheel drive. Neither Hanaker nor Laurie mentioned their intentions to others, so the later police and media conjecture that someone knew he’d be going to his shearing shed and was lying in wait for him has no credence.

Before the lecture night finished, Laurie and Hanaker quietly left together. He dropped Hanaker at the Commercial Hotel, then drove the ten kilometres to his farm. He has a notion that as he approached the sheds he may have seen lights coming from the windows, but if he did, he dismissed them as headlight reflections.

Preston is an impressive shearing shed by any standard. It is a huge, well-constructed and purpose-equipped building situated close to the boundary between the property and the main road. Government agencies spared no expense when they built it in the 1950s as compensation for property lost in the flooding of Lake Eildon. The main doors can be locked and chained, but theft was never a problem because there is little of value stored in the building. A determined intruder could find points of entry without keys, as in most similar structures.

Laurie unchained the main gate padlock some time after 11 pm and drove to the south-east door that opens to the shearing stands, presses, fleece tables and lanolin-polished floor. When he entered this room, he turned on a light from the power box on his left. He was relieved to find that the pump was switched off; he’d worried unnecessarily. He then noticed a stepladder between the shearing stands. He was puzzled because he hadn’t put it there; it was usually stored in the western section of the building behind stacks of old building materials and machinery. He then spotted that two junction covers had been bent upwards to expose the wiring. These covers were about six feet apart on electrical conduits along the wall where shearing machines were mounted. He stepped onto the ladder to have a look, not realising that he’d disturbed intruders who were still in the building.

Needing to urinate, he walked through a small side door into the darkness of the indoor sheep pens, only to be belted over the head and collarbone with a piece of three-by-two wood and knocked unconscious.

This was no ordinary assault. Laurie’s injuries were of the kind you might associate with a hate attack, torture or drunken exhibitionism. His skull was fractured, he had defensive stab wounds to his hands, stab wounds in his legs, a boning knife was embedded in his left ankle through his boot, a hole had been punctured through his nostrils with a cattle punch, his nose and cheekbone were shattered and his face, chest, collarbone and back were black with bruising from multiple punches or blows with a blunt instrument.

He regained consciousness two hours later, but everything was pitch black. He couldn’t see what was causing him this incredible pain whenever he moved; it was the boning knife, which was hitting the railing and walls as he stumbled in the dark.

He hobbled to his four-wheel drive, put it in low gear and crawled in stops and starts to his neighbour’s property. His neighbour, Russell Jones, heard Laurie’s vehicle approach at 1.26 am; he went outside to investigate and found Laurie calling for help. Jones drove Laurie to Mansfield Hospital, but the local doctor decided he was too badly injured for her to handle, so she sent him by ambulance to the regional hospital at Wangaratta, leaving the knife in his ankle.

The Mansfield police were called out and in turn they called the detectives from Alexandra, who notified Senior Sergeant Neil Fursdon at Wangaratta CIB. The Alexandra detectives also called Denis Tanner, who was at home in bed in Benalla, to notify him that Laurie was being taken to Wangaratta in the ambulance.

Denis took off to Wangaratta and was met at the hospital by Fursdon, who tried to prevent him from talking to Laurie. After Denis ignored him, Fursdon wrote an official direction that he wasn’t permitted to go to the assault scene at Preston. For the next four days, the police maintained exclusive access to the shed and assault scene.

When police went to the shearing shed, they found that at the power board the intruders had left the mains lighting on but had shut off the power. Two sliding doors opening into the outdoor sheep yards were slightly open, as were a series of yard gates and a cyclone gate leading onto the road north of the shed.

There is no rocket science in establishing what the intruders were doing in the shed. They weren’t there to steal wool; there was no wool to steal. They weren’t stealing shearing machines, which all had three-pin plugs and were bolted onto steel plates with wing nuts.

The intruders had entered on foot from the north-west gate, walked through the sheep yards, partly opened a sliding door and entered the shed. Once inside, they climbed over a mass of old building material to get the ladder, which they carried back over the building materials and through the internal sheep pens, opening sash gates as they went. They placed the ladder between the shearing stands, resting it against the wall, then turned off the power at the switchboard, climbed the ladder and unscrewed the electrical conduit covers to expose the wiring at two separate points.

Nothing else was interfered with. One conduit cover plate had a hole drilled in it, as police technicians do to accommodate micro-microphones (see Image 19).

The intruders weren’t random thieves. They’d obviously been there before: they knew the layout of the shed and where to find the ladder. And their purpose was clear: to access the electrical wiring at the exact spot where police had earlier installed ‘legal’ listening devices. But when Laurie obtained documents under FOI, this was only mentioned in taskforce working papers, not in the official reports and media releases.

Wangaratta forensic officers arrived at Preston at 6.35 am. The media and the Tanner family were banned, and the press were only permitted to film the outside of the shed.

Detective Senior Constable Paul Kneebone from Wangaratta found a fresh blood spot on an open gate in the yards, outside the door through which the intruders had come in and out. Laurie hadn’t gone near this area, so this was an intruder’s blood.

But the source of the blood was never identified. According to FOI documents released to Laurie seven years later, the sample was contaminated; the police destroyed it, with the result that there was no option of a later re-check or independent analysis. The photograph of the blood spot (see Image 20) shows nothing obvious to contaminate it.

Detective Senior Sergeant Fursdon submitted an ‘Incident Fact Sheet’ to superiors and police command, but the fact sheet made no mention of the ladder, the power switch, the wiring interference, the blood or what the assailant(s) had actually been doing. The fact sheet claimed that Laurie Tanner ‘had little to drink’. This was of no relevance. For the record, Laurie had a glass of red wine with his dinner at 7 pm.

The Herald Sun on 29 May 1998 reported the incident under the headline ‘Probe on links to Tanner death’. The article quoted Neil Fursdon as saying that investigators hadn’t established the motive for the assault. It was possible that there was a link to Jenny Tanner’s death, but ‘it might just be that he has caught someone coming in to pinch his wool.’

Two days after the assault, Melbourne-based Special Response Squad (SRS) detectives were assigned the investigation as Operation Ortega. They started at Mansfield by going to the shed and removing the bent conduit cover plates. It was never explained why they did this. If the cover plates had evidentiary value, surely the forensic technicians would have collected them the previous day? The cover plates were never returned; they simply vanished.

If the cover plates had been left in place, the holes drilled in them might have alerted others to the intruders’ purpose. Denis Tanner, in particular, would have noticed, and the press might even have cottoned on.

The detectives then went to Wangaratta Hospital and spoke to Laurie. Tapes obtained through FOI confirm that the police placed bugs in Laurie’s hospital room soon after his admission. I query why police would do that to somebody who was the victim of this crime?

Laurie told them about the visits by ‘Barton’ and ‘Marshall’ in 1996, but the Ortega information report of this conversation made no mention of this. The tape shows that he did say it, so why did the police omit it?

The next day Ortega detectives took inspectors from the power company to examine the conduit and wiring. Taskforce information report No. 5 shows that the inspectors found no apparent reason for any person to have accessed the conduit. One inspector suggested that someone ‘may have bent [the covers] up to feed a new cable or wire through the conduit’. Police do this when installing listening devices. The wiring was damaged, although the police didn’t photograph that, and the power company required Laurie to rewire the building.

Laurie was released from hospital on 2 June. The next day Ortega detectives arrived to take him to the shearing shed to participate in a video re-enactment. He still had headaches and dizziness and asked them to put it off.

The police arrived again next day with police surgeon Dr Price, who according to his report examined Laurie ‘to reflect on whether or not he could have self-inflicted his injuries’. Dr Price dismissed self-infliction and confirmed that the injuries were life-threatening. Again I query the police action: Laurie was their complainant, the victim.

Laurie participated in the re-enactment video but could offer little information because he didn’t see his assailant(s). Conducting the re-enactment too was a puzzling action. What was its purpose? Normally video re-enactments are used for courts to corroborate a confession from an offender, or sometimes to seek witnesses through television appeals. In this case the only possible witness was Laurie himself, and he was refused a copy of the video under FOI.

Taskforce information report No. 55, submitted on 17 June, cited the re-enactment to cast doubt on Laurie’s evidence: ‘On entering the shed and seeing the ladder, Tanner stated he climbed up the ladder and touched the junction plate that had been bent upwards. This was the first time that Tanner had mentioned this.’ Yet earlier, in report No. 8, dated 3 June 1998, the same detective had written: ‘He recalls that when he first entered the shearing shed and checked the water pump, he observed the ladder against the wall. He then stepped up on the ladder to look at the bent junction plate.’

The Tanners and their friends became the sole targets of the Ortega investigation. The taskforce obtained all landline and mobile phone records for Laurie, Denis, their relatives and anybody else who had contact with them.

Although Dr Price had declared that Laurie didn’t self-inflict his injuries, the taskforce sought a second opinion from the Government Medical Officer, Dr John Munro Gall. In a six-page report dated 2 September, the doctor savaged the self-infliction hypothesis:

 

The issue of self-infliction was raised. These injuries are not self-inflicted. Some of the injuries sustained by Mr Tanner are serious injuries that have the potential to be life threatening. The injuries are not due to self-infliction but are the result of an assault including substantial blunt instrument trauma to the posterior aspect of the skull. The injury to his right hand is indicative of a defensive injury. The absence of memory associated with this assault is entirely consistent with the head injury sustained and the symptoms described post-assault are those of post-concussive syndrome.

 

Dr Munro Gall sent Laurie a copy of this report, with a note telling him to ‘keep it secure because I feel you may need it one day’.

The Ortega Taskforce persisted with the hypothesis. Laurie claims that on 28 October 1998 a detective, David Russell, browbeat him, claiming that he had self-inflicted his injuries and set up the scene to make it look as if police were responsible. Later that day the detective told Laurie that he would concede that he was knocked unconscious by unknown person/s who were there to steal his wool or shearing machines. The response to Laurie’s FOI request said that all of the Ortega conversations with Laurie were taped, except for these two with Russell.

When Russell left, Laurie immediately rang his solicitors, who wrote to the taskforce saying that Laurie would no longer speak to them unless he had his solicitor or another person with him.

The Ortega superior, Detective Inspector John Kapetanovski, responded to the solicitors on 5 November 1998:

 

I would be disappointed if the investigators from my office failed to explore all possibilities in an effort to resolve this investigation, which appears to be motiveless. I would point out at this stage Section 326 of the Crimes Act [on false reporting] would also have to be examined, given the reluctance of the victim to fully co-operate and speak to the investigators on his own. If your client so desires he is at liberty to withdraw his complaint and request no further police action be taken.

 

It took Laurie seven years through FOI to discover that three swabs were taken from the ladder and that one showed male DNA that didn’t originate from Laurie Tanner; police had destroyed this DNA.

One obvious place for investigators to look for traces was under the slats of the shearing-shed floor (see Image 21), as the intruders might have bled or dropped something through. Offenders often drop things at crime scenes: I remember finding prison day-release passes, driving licences, credit or business cards, even pay slips. A smoker may have dropped cigarette butts or matches through, and it was known that one of the intruders was bleeding. I pointed this out to the Ombudsman on a visit. Although his investigator was dropping his own cigarette butts through the slats, he wouldn’t search under there.

FOI revealed that Ortega investigators recorded a written excuse for not searching under the floor:

 

We have made enquiries with the State Forensic Laboratory who dismissed the suggestion of searching under the shearing shed because of difficulties quantifying blood loss from sheep manure.

 

But the quantity of blood had no relevance to anything.

FOI also revealed that the police checked every phone record of Laurie and Denis Tanner and those who had contact with them, but didn’t check the phone records of any Kale detective, police ‘spy’ technician or Special Operations Group minder. Nor did they check the Mansfield mobile phone tower records, which would have shown all mobile calls in the district; there wouldn’t have been many calls at 11 pm.

Internal affairs tasked Commander A.R. Johnson from the Traffic and Operations Support Unit and Inspector Emmett Dunne to look into the assault. Their report ignored the police technicians and focused on the whereabouts of Kale Taskforce members, who gave them verbal explanations. These explanations weren’t verified by checking phone records, the Mansfield mobile tower records or police car and fuel records. Johnson and Dunne’s report said: ‘I have not attempted to verify alibis where family members are involved as there has been no official complaint or allegation made by Mr Tanner to justify the embarrassment and upset this may cause.’

For eight years Laurie tried unsuccessfully to find out whether or not surveillance equipment was ever installed in the shed. Operation Trencher later reported that the homes, vehicles and workplaces of Denis and Laurie were ‘lawfully’ bugged on and off for three years, but that the listening devices in the shearing shed were only installed for the first two months of Operation Kale in mid-1996. It seems inconsistent for the police to leave the bugs installed at Laurie’s home, in his vehicles and other places, but not his everyday workplace.

Laurie originally lodged an Ombudsman complaint, and former Clerk of Courts Peter O’Grady and another officer were tasked to investigate. When I took an interest in his assault, Laurie renewed his Ombudsman complaint, and Peter O’Grady came with the new investigator. He told us that in his initial report to his superior, he’d said that police were the most likely assailants. He acknowledged that he hadn’t thought to do phone record or phone tower checks.

•••

Bob Fleming, a long-term friend of Laurie’s, came to see me in 2002, when I first started reviewing this case. He was now the Mansfield police traffic-camera operator, and he volunteered the information that he’d been at the Mansfield police station on the evening of Laurie’s assault and seen two Kale detectives there. When I discussed this with Operation Trencher, they claimed that Fleming had mistaken his days. The Kale Taskforce diaries record that Inspector Calderbank was at Mansfield on the day before the assault, but Trencher refused to do phone record checks to confirm these movements.

Fleming, who is also a member of Rotary, told another pertinent story: during the Rotary dinner at the Commercial Hotel, he saw a well-built stranger come in, scan the crowd and leave. This person wasn’t one of the Kale Taskforce detectives. Fleming went on to the men’s health night, and late in the session he noticed that Laurie was gone. Shortly afterwards he saw the same stranger come in, look around and leave. The man returned and repeated the exercise a short time later. Fleming didn’t hear of Laurie’s assault until the next day.

The actions of this stranger are consistent with the practice of police technicians, who work in teams, communicating via radio or mobile telephone. The occupier of the target premises is usually kept under observation or distracted to ensure that the techs can safely enter and to alert them or create a diversion if they are in danger of discovery.

The early crowd scan at the Commercial is consistent with observer tactics. The health meeting was virtually at Laurie’s home, so the observer would likely believe he was settled for the night and would give the technicians the all-clear to go into the shed.

In that case Laurie’s sudden appearance at his shearing shed would be unexpected. The intruders would have heard a four-wheel drive approaching and scampered to the safety of the unlit sheep pens. When Laurie went into the pens, he would have walked right into them.

The intruders may not have known it was Laurie they’d belted in the darkness. In that event the ‘observer’ would have been sent back to the health night to check on Laurie. When he wasn’t there, the observer would go outside to phone or radio those at the shed, then again check the room. If phones were used, all these actions would show up on mobile phone and Mansfield phone tower records. To any investigator, a check of these phone records was a basic start to any legitimate investigation.

After the Herald Sun publicised my research of this case, I received an anonymous phone call, obviously from a policeman, who claimed that in police/detective circles Laurie’s principal assailant was common knowledge. He named an officer who he claimed had provided security backup on the bugging of the Tanners. I offered to give his name to the Ombudsman and Operation Trencher, provided they would give me an assurance that checks would be made on his phone records. All refused, claiming that my source was anonymous.

But nobody expected this next revelation.

•••

On Thursday 17 March 2005, Laurie was repairing a loose railing in the sheep pens when he found a weathered business card behind the central wooden railing, in the pen adjoining the one in which he’d been bashed.

The card was that of Detective Senior Sergeant Jeff Calderbank. Laurie had no doubt that this card was dropped on the night he was assaulted and that it had lain hidden behind the rail for seven years. The discovery gave Bob Fleming’s story credence.

The finding of this card by no means indicated that Inspector Calderbank himself had been in the shed. It’s more likely to have come from someone else who’d been given the card at a much earlier date. It was an out-of-date card printed before metropolitan telephone numbers were given a number ‘9’ prefix in 1995. A likely explanation for its being in the shed was that an intruder had it in his pocket or wallet and had dropped it while searching for a phone number in the panic and darkness.

Laurie knew that Calderbank had been in the shearing shed once, in August 1996, but he’d only gone to the front shearing floor. He and other police had never gone into these sheep pens.

After repeatedly trying to speak to Ombudsman George Brouwer without success, Laurie rang me. I contacted police internal affairs suggesting that somebody very senior outside the Ethical Standards Department should investigate. I also said that Laurie had lost trust in Operation Trencher. That request was ignored.

On Thursday 24 March, Laurie received a phone call from Bill Nash of Operation Trencher. Laurie claims Nash told him to hand over the card, claiming that it was police property, but Laurie stuck to his guns, and Nash did nothing. I later asked Bill Nash about this and he told me, ‘Tough, if Laurie didn’t want to trust me, that was his problem.’

Laurie wasn’t deterred and commissioned independent forensic tests on the card at the South Australian government forensic laboratory. The tests identified Laurie’s old blood and DNA on the card, and found two other DNA traces that weren’t his. This was confirmation that the card was there when Laurie was assaulted.

The new Office of Police Integrity (OPI) was better resourced than the Ombudsman had been, but it refused to take on Laurie’s complaint or reply to correspondence. In frustration I approached state National Party leader Peter Ryan; he wrote to the OPI, and its chief investigator, Graham Ashton, offered to meet Laurie. The result was that Ashton agreed to discuss the matter with Operation Trencher.

At the request of the OPI, Operation Trencher undertook to search under the shed and check the phone records of the Kale Taskforce members and police technicians who worked with them. Trencher did neither. The result is that not one of the multiple anti-corruption investigations carried out these most elementary investigative actions.

19 Damage to electrical conduit. Note hole drilled in cover plate (arrowed) and three-pin plug to shearing motors (not removed from wall) (obtained under FOI)

20 Blood spot on gate (obtained under FOI)

21 Preston shearing shed floor slats (obtained under FOI)