ANOTHER BOOKIE ROBBER BITES THE DUST
‘Prendergast is no doubt
one of Australia’s most
notorious criminals.’
AS a professional punter and career gunman, Laurence Joseph Prendergast must have known the odds of him living to normal retirement age were slim to none. He was right: the closest he came to a gold watch was scoring a ‘hot’ one from another thief.
Police have at least three strong theories why he was murdered. But what they haven’t got is a body, or a suspect, or a murder scene, or an informer, or a lead. Apart from those small problems the investigation is proceeding well – and has been for more than twenty years.
Even as a child Prendergast was bad news – and age didn’t improve him. He first came to the notice of police at twelve years old when he became an apprentice housebreaker and thief working with his older brother.
Laurie was the second of nine children from a dysfunctional family that included another two stepchildren. In desperation, authorities placed him in the St Augustine orphanage for two years to try to straighten him out.
It didn’t work. It was already too late.
While the young Prendergast had a good relationship with his father he said once that his alcoholic mother had beaten him for as long as he could remember.
It left him with a chip on his shoulder and a desire to square the ledger. As is often the case, those who are bullied look to bully others and young Laurie progressed quickly from fists to rocks (he was charged with throwing missiles to endanger persons when he was a child) and then to guns. He was charged with discharging a firearm from a car when still a teenager.
He went to four schools, leaving in year eight with a reputation as an average student with an above average temper.
A schoolmate remembers, ‘He was really cool and stand-offish. He only had about five or six close friends and they all ended up gangsters. He was a tough bastard and he could fight.’
Prendergast became an apprentice butcher, a storeman and a labourer and while he had held twenty jobs, few lasted more than two weeks.
His love was sport, the more violent the better. He was a good footballer, won two amateur wrestling titles and was a handy amateur boxer. But it was his expertise at using violence outside the ring that gave him his fearsome reputation.
His criminal record shows that he soon moved to sex crimes with violence. As a teenager he broke into a house where he sexually assaulted a 26-year-old woman. He was sentenced to twelve months in a youth detention centre for buggery and burglary.
But while recovering from a car accident he escaped from hospital and was on the run for another year. The accident left him with a fractured skull. The injury did not help his anger management problems.
In 1968 he was sentenced to an adult jail for rape and other offences. His partner in crime was his childhood friend, Christopher Dale Flannery. They would live similar violent lives and would disappear in remarkably similar circumstances.
In 1974 Prendergast was sentenced in the county court to five years jail over an attempt to rob the Bank of New South Wales in Pascoe Vale. Again his partner was Flannery, who was also sentenced to jail.
By the mid-1970s Prendergast was uncontrollable. He was convicted of assaulting a prison officer and later of assaulting a policeman.
In the case where he attacked police he chose a strange place to try and get even. He was in the criminal dock as Senior Detective Kim West was giving evidence on a charge of possession of a pistol. West was a Falstaffian figure and his testimony was always entertaining – Shakespeare meets The Bill.
But on this occasion the detective’s recollections seemed to disturb Prendergast. When the experienced policeman gave sworn evidence that Prendergast had confessed in the back of a police car, it became all too much for the highly-strung Laurie.
‘He jumped out of the dock and ran along the bar table yelling, “You are a liar. You are telling lies”,’ West recalled.
Senior Detective Ian ‘Twiggy’ Thomas had to tackle him. He grabbed him in a bear-hug and wrestled him from the bar table. Although he was smaller, Prendergast used his wrestling experience to swivel to face Thomas. Then he head butted and bit the startled detective on the left cheek, leaving a wound that required three stitches. It became infected; leaving a permanent reminder that dental hygiene was not high on Prendergast’s lists of priorities.
As he was bundled back into his cell, Prendergast lashed out with a kick trying to make contact with West’s groin. In the confusion the cell door was smashed into Prendergast’s right leg – the same thigh that was still tender from where he had been shot during a failed armed robbery.
The pistol charges were dismissed but he was sentenced to four months for the assault. Clearly he had bitten off more than he could chew.
On release from jail he teamed up with the gang of armed robbers led by Ray Bennett. Police say he was one of the team that carried out the Great Bookie Robbery.
And when Bennett fell out with the Kane brothers, Laurie was quick to back up. He, Bennett and Vinnie Mikkelsen were alleged to have machine-gunned Les Kane to death in late 1978.
Prendergast knew the consequences of taking on the Kanes. Two months before the murder, he obtained a false passport after stealing the identity of an associate named Noel Robert Herity.
He was charged in December with the murder and acquitted nine months later.
His police record states that following the acquittal, ‘Prendergast has done everything he can to hide his current whereabouts. He lives in constant fear of being shot by the sole remaining brother Ray Kane or one of his associates.’
When arrested for carrying a gun he told police he needed a weapon because of the ‘vendetta with the Kane family.’
His police record states, ‘Prendergast is no doubt one of Australia’s most notorious criminals.
‘(He is) considered to be a determined, persistent and cunning criminal with an intense hatred for the police or any kind of authority’.
In 1980 he was spotted in Brunswick, probably doing surveillance on a payroll delivery. He was found to be in possession of a pistol that he said he needed for protection.
When he was taken back to an interview room in the Russell Street police station he turned around and shaped up to the lone detective. Laurie’s judgment was slightly flawed as he had decided to take on a policeman training for an upcoming boxing competition. The policeman hit him twice and Laurie wanted to make friends.
‘I asked him why he wanted a fight and he said, “I just wanted to test your reflexes, no hard feelings”.’
Two months after he was acquitted of the Bennett murder he met the woman he would marry. They were an odd couple, proving that opposites attract. She worked in banks. He robbed them. Perhaps they could have driven to work together.
In May 1981 he married Ursula and they had a child, Lauren – whose godfather, police say, was Russell Cox, the notorious New South Wales escapee and gunman.
In 1982 the young family moved to the outer Melbourne suburb of Warrandyte, where they were building a new house. Even then he tried to make it difficult for enemies to find him. He chose to buy the land in the name of David Carter – one of his many aliases.
‘Once Laurie met me we stayed close as a family and tried to keep to ourselves. Laurie didn’t really want me to associate with my old friends,’ Ursula would tell police later.
In 1985 – seven years after Les Kane was killed, and three years after Brian Kane’s murder – Prendergast remained wary. He used disguises, refused to trust strangers and stuck with an old crew of contacts he had known for years. As police said, ‘Laurence Prendergast lived in constant fear of being murdered.’ It was the only way he knew to survive.
For the moment.
One of his oldest friends, Christopher Dale Flannery, was in his own underworld war in Sydney and had just become a casualty.
Flannery went missing on 9 May 1985. Some suggest Prendergast started to make noises that he would try to avenge Flannery’s death.
The theory goes that Prendergast (rightly) blamed George Freeman for Flannery’s death and planned to hit the Sydney crime boss.
One theory is that Freeman, a renowned race fixer, decided to fix the situation by getting in first and organising for Prendergast to go missing the way his mate Flannery had.
Certainly, many believed that Prendergast had worked with Flannery in Sydney. Former Sydney detective Roger Rogerson went as far as to claim it was Prendergast who shot undercover policeman Mick Drury in his Chatswood home on 6 June 1984.
About a week before Prendergast went missing in August 1985 his wife borrowed $6000 from a credit company and gave him the money.
She told police that although they were not financially stable, Prendergast acquired a passport in July for an overseas trip.
So just weeks after Flannery had gone missing Prendergast found the need to be able to head overseas. And he needed cash – quickly.
There was another sign that the normally cautious criminal felt he was at greater than normal risk. After years of police raids, he had taken to hiding handguns so that he didn’t get charged with being a felon in possession. But shortly after Flannery went missing he began to carry a gun again.
Ursula told police he carried a silver pistol when he felt threatened. She said that in the last month before he disappeared he began to sleep with it under his pillow. He took it from storage just after Flannery disappeared.
On 15 August, the same day she gave Prendergast the $6000 in cash, Ursula took their daughter to the Gold Coast to visit her parents.
Laurie stayed home, because he was scared of flying. Prendergast and his 13-year-old stepson Carl met up with a group of men. The teenager noticed Laurie was carrying a paper bag full of cash. Was this the loan money? If so, what was he trying to buy?
Certainly there were no obvious signs Prendergast planned to disappear. He had invested heavily in his new house and had just commissioned an in-ground pool.
On Friday 23 August Laurie let Carl skip school as it was the last day of term and they had both had a late night. They cleaned the house for Ursula’s return. Then Prendergast drove Carl to Doncaster Shopping Town. The arrangement was that the boy would later catch a bus back to Warrandyte then call Laurie from a local coffee shop to get a lift home. When there was no answer he walked home.
Earlier, two builders working on the block next door had seen Prendergast drive from the house in his silver Volvo. There is no evidence that he returned.
When Carl walked in he found two cups and two dirty plates from a meal of baked beans in the sink. There was also half a load of washing in the machine and part in the dryer.
This surprised Carl as it seemed strange to leave the house messy after they had spent the morning cleaning it ready for his mother’s return.
That night Ursula called home to say she would be back the next day.
‘Laurie was meticulous when it came to punctuality, so it seemed odd to me that he hadn’t contacted Carl to let him know where he was.’
On the same day a woman noticed a silver Volvo parked in Cartwell Street, Heidelberg. When it hadn’t been moved four days later, she reported it to police.
It was Prendergast’s car – parked and locked. The radio was still tuned to 3KZ, Laurie’s favourite station. In the car was the remote control to his garage and the Football Record from the previous week’s Essendon v. Melbourne game.
Carl would later tell police that when they were at the football Prendergast saw someone he recognised and needed to avoid.
But there was something else in the car – a cigarette butt. Friends said Laurie was not a smoker and did not let anyone smoke inside the Volvo.
When Ursula arrived home someone who understood her concerns picked her up. It was Gail Bennett, Ray’s widow.
She went to a lawyer’s house that night and contact was made with the major crime squad. The following morning she officially reported Prendergast missing to the Brighton police but she remained so frightened she refused to give her home address.
She would tell police later, with an understandable touch of bitterness, ‘Laurie’s friends show no concern as to his disappearance or whereabouts.’
Either they didn’t care or they already knew what had happened and there was nothing they could do about it.
Ursula told police, ‘When I started going through Laurie’s things a couple of days after he disappeared, I located that pistol secreted amongst his clothes in his drawer in the robe in the main bedroom. I believe this indicates that Laurie wouldn’t have left home on his own accord or that, if he did voluntarily leave home to meet someone, then he trusted the person he was going to meet.’
Certainly she had her suspicions, once confronting his cousin Billy at gunpoint although there was no evidence pointing to his involvement.
Laurie and his cousin Billy were not close but in the months before he went missing they began to socialise again. A witness told police he saw Billy’s van near his cousin’s home on the day he disappeared.
Billy chose to remove the name Prendergast from the side of his VW van around the time Laurie disappeared. It was probably a wise move.
There were many theories about what happened. One was that he was abducted and murdered in Yarrawonga, set up by the group still loyal to the Kanes. The most popular theory, of course, was that he was killed as a pre-emptive strike before he could move against George Freeman’s Sydney forces as a payback for killing Flannery.
As Coroner Maurice Gurvich found, ‘In many ways the story that unfolded here resembled the plot of a gangster movie of the genre popularised by the Warner Brothers. There was evidence of deception, aliases, disguises, fraud, strange property and financial transactions, large sums of money in a paper bag, a missing gun and other evidence, all central to the disappearance of Laurence Prendergast. And there were allegations of a cover-up and conspiracy. All this together with the intervention of a clairvoyant make the ingredients of a good B grade screenplay.’
Or could it all be much simpler?
One of his closest – and most violent – friends suspected that Laurie had been making after hours visits to his wife.
So was it the oldest motive of all?
When Kath Flannery was interviewed by the National Crime Authority in Sydney the widow asked, ‘How are you going with Laurie Prendergast?’
Detective: Not good.
Kath: I would be looking in his own camp.