THE SHOOTING OF MICHAEL DRURY
‘I was a giant in the trade; I thought I was invincible, and unpinchable.’
IF only there hadn’t been a sale at the Melbourne Myer store.
Then a policeman wouldn’t have slipped away to buy his wife some sheets and then he wouldn’t have been a little bit late for a briefing on a drug sting to be carried out by a visiting New South Wales undercover detective.
Perhaps then he would have heard the exact instructions on when to move in after the heroin was exchanged and before the $110,000 buy-bust money was out of sight.
Because if those instructions had been followed then one of the main targets would have been arrested outside the Old Melbourne Motor Inn in textbook fashion and the case would have ended with criminal convictions and police commendations.
Instead it started a long, painful and fatal chain of events that would lead to at least two killings and the attempted murder of an undercover detective. The chain would also lead to the ultimate exposure of deep and sinister corruption in police ranks.
Mick Drury was the undercover policeman who almost died. He was young, smart and ambitious and, like most detectives, keen to keep control of his investigation.
It was a New South Wales drug operation but eventually it bled over the border into Victoria. This meant it would have to become a joint job involving both state forces.
This was always fraught with danger as there had long been a simmering distrust between the two groups. The Victorians were sometimes dismissed as ‘Mexicans’ because ‘they were only good down south,’ while the New South Wales force was often referred to as the ‘best police that money could buy.’
In reality, the drug problem had been recognised in New South Wales and more resources were devoted to enforcing drug laws than in Victoria. The drug squad in Sydney considered it was the best and would tell anyone who cared to listen and those who didn’t. Most Victorian detectives weren’t impressed. They had seen many of their jobs burned as crooks were tipped off when information went over the border.
In one job that went to New South Wales, Melbourne drug squad detectives photographed money to be used in an undercover buy but Sydney surveillance police ‘lost’ the suspect (and the money) after the exchange. Later it was found that the money had been divided among bent Sydney police.
In another job the drug courier didn’t get far from the Sydney airport before he was ambushed and his cash stolen. Detectives in Victoria blamed their Sydney counterparts.
In 1981 Victorian police had solid information that New South Wales Deputy Commissioner Bill Allen (who was being groomed for the top job) was the bagman for some government figures and that each Wednesday he would deliver a share of the bribe money to a senior minister. The information was that police collected $100 a month from each SP bookmaker and $5000 a week from illegal casinos. Further information was that Allen used two corrupt men in the 21 Division, which was police gaming, to run the scam.
Victorian police secretly went to Sydney and photographed Allen getting into a car on a Wednesday and driving in the direction of the minister’s office.
When the information was passed to the New South Wales Commissioner his response was both useless and predictable. He sent a senior officer to ‘investigate’ whose insightful questions included: ‘Are you in a position to advise me on whose authority those photographs were taken?’
Translation: ‘Keep out of our patch.’
Bill Allen remained Deputy Commissioner – until he was finally exposed as a crook. He was found to have regularly met crime boss Abe Saffron and retired in disgrace after being demoted to sergeant. He was later jailed for bribing the head of the Special Licensing Police on at least five occasions.
But while the Victorians were quick to blame corrupt Sydney detectives they tended to be blind to the crooks in their own ranks.
It was in this climate that they came together to co-operate. The two controlling police were Johnny Weel from Victoria – laconic, tough, brave and straight as a gun barrel – and Mick Drury, who was loud, funny and cocky.
They were different types of men but they were both good at what they did. But above them there were tensions. The New South Wales police arrived and tried to take over while the Victorians tried to protect their patch. If the arrests were made it would be dealt with in Victorian courts and they would get to run the case.
The Sydney police refused to hand over documents and Melbourne officers were slow to come up with the $110,000 for the undercover buy. But eventually a plan was hatched and the deal was set for the Old Melbourne in North Melbourne in March 1982.
The room would be bugged. Armed police would be in adjoining rooms and units stationed outside in the street.
With a little luck, police would get the Sydney connection, Jack Richardson, the distributor, Brian Hansen, and the major supplier, Alan Williams, in the operation.
On the day it began slowly and then went downhill. Drury and his money were there and so was Hansen, but Williams simply refused to turn up with the heroin. And a heroin sting without any heroin is not much of a sting – more just a waste of time.
After nearly nine hours, Williams – stoned, distracted and still suspicious – finally fronted and the deal was done outside the hotel. Drury pressed a squeal button hidden under his armpit to trigger the arrest.
But the police who were meant to move in got it wrong. They rushed in too fast, and the car that was supposed to block the dealer’s escape overshot the spot by thirty metres. It was enough to give Williams an out – and he took it – driving off with the heroin.
He dumped the gear and ran through Melbourne University, where he had once worked as a cleaner, and disappeared.
Eventually, he was arrested but the case was no longer simple. Having failed to catch him with the heroin, the prosecution would rely heavily on police evidence and that would prove to be confused and deeply flawed.
But Williams wasn’t going to take chances. He had an inside man in Victoria – a well-respected long-term investigator – and through him he first tried to buy back the key evidence: the heroin found dumped at Melbourne University.
Within a week, the word was out that he would pay $30,000 to have the gear – by then at the forensic laboratory – swapped for harmless powder. But John Weel was told of the plan and quickly had the suspect powder tested to ensure that even if there were a quick switch, the evidence already existed to nail the crook. This meant that Williams’ first attempt to bribe his way out failed. But no matter. At the committal the magistrate found sufficient evidence to send Richardson and Hansen to trial but ordered that Williams be freed.
However, the Crown eventually decided that Williams should be directly presented on the case.
Having seen the flawed prosecution case, Williams knew that he could only be convicted on Drury’s eyewitness testimony and he started to use contacts to see if Drury could be bought.
Considering the reputation of New South Wales police at the time, it was a fair bet. But he was a good player out of luck.
His approach, through an old mate, hit man Christopher Dale Flannery, to rogue detective Roger Rogerson and then to Drury, was rebuffed. But it speaks volumes about the state of play at the time that Rogerson could calmly ask a fellow officer to cop a bribe without fearing it would be reported to higher authorities.
Many New South Wales police were convinced they were above the law and frankly, in effect they were probably right.
When Drury knocked back the approach (but didn’t report it) Williams and Flannery decided that if they couldn’t buy the undercover detective, they should kill him.
On 6 June 1984 Flannery, possibly in the company of his old mate Laurence Joseph Prendergast, shot Drury at his Chatswood home.
Against all odds, the policeman survived and his testimony would ultimately expose the cancer within New South Wales law enforcement.
There are many versions of what really happened. Some have been told – some haven’t.
Roger Rogerson was never convicted of attempting to bribe Drury or involvement in the attempted murder.
Flannery’s version will never be known because he went on the missing list before he could be charged. Prendergast was also murdered and his body never found.
Williams’ co-offender Jack Richardson could not assist after his body was found in country Victoria with two bullets in the back of his head. Almost certainly the last person he saw was Flannery – who took the contract to kill likeable Jack on behalf of Williams.
Williams was frightened the former star ruckman, who played more than 100 games with West Adelaide and Sturt, would roll over and talk to police. And he was right. The man they called Melbourne Jack was starting to indicate he wouldn’t mind a chat to the right detective.
Richardson was last seen talking to two men in a Fitzroy Street ice-cream parlour in St Kilda on 4 March 1984. It was only a few hundred metres from where Flannery used to work at Mickey’s Disco.
Timing is everything. Richardson disappeared the day before he was due in court for a preliminary hearing on Williams’ heroin trafficking charges.
Another man close to the crew was Melbourne drug dealer Leslie ‘Johnny’ Cole, who was shot dead outside his Sydney home on 10 November 1982. His biological son, Mark Moran, would be killed in eerily similar circumstances when he was ambushed outside his home in June 2000.
The only man who survived – at least for a time – to tell his story was Williams himself, who admits he was prepared to pay $100,000 to have Drury killed.
Williams spoke to the authors just weeks after he was released from Goulburn Prison in 1992. He said he wanted to make a fresh start. Sadly, he didn’t make it.
He recalled that on the day of the deal in the Old Melbourne his instincts told him there was something wrong but greed and a brain clouded with heroin made him go ahead regardless.
‘I knew Brian Hansen – he said he had a drug buyer (Drury) down from Sydney. The deal was supposed to kick off at lunchtime, but for about nine hours I smelled a rat. I didn’t want to do the business. Brian, on the other hand, was insistent, he said he had counted the money and that everything was sweet.’
Williams was in another suburb, but after being badgered he agreed to go to the Old Melbourne with the heroin. But he was ‘light’. He was supposed to supply a pound but had already sold four ounces to a regular customer.
Still wary of the stranger from Sydney, he wanted the deal done in public. ‘I didn’t go into the hotel, I waited in the car outside.
‘To cut a long story short, Brian went into the hotel, came back with Drury and introduced him. Well, he didn’t want to get into the car. (Drury wanted to control the situation and signal waiting police to move when he saw the heroin.)
‘I smelled a rat. I showed him the gear but there was something wrong.’ Moments later, Williams saw an unmarked police car in his rear view mirror speed around the corner.
‘They were so keen to block me in that they skidded past the car. I put it in gear and just took off.’
Williams may have been filled with juice but once he abandoned his car close by, near Melbourne University, the former star footballer could easily outpace his pursuers on foot. He knew the university layout well and escaped after dumping the drugs. About four months later, he was arrested in Adelaide and charged with heroin trafficking.
The committal was a shambles. Police who declared they could identify Williams were discredited. Only Drury’s evidence survived. The case was certainly not helped by New South Wales and Victorian police squabbling with each other. Despite repeated requests, Drury’s statement was not delivered until the day of the hearing.
When the Director of Public Prosecutions decided to directly present the case to a higher court, Williams believed only one man stood between him and a long stretch in Pentridge Prison and that man was Michael Drury.
‘I knew I needed help because the only bloke who stuck to his guns in the committal was Drury. He was unshakeable. It wasn’t his efforts which fell down for the prosecution; it was the Melbourne police around him, trying too hard.
‘Mick Drury said it like it was, the others painted a picture which couldn’t be finished. They ran out of paint.’
Williams had had enough dealings with corrupt police to believe he could still buy himself out of trouble but he needed an ‘in’.
He needed someone to get an offer to Drury that he could make a big dollar if he just massaged his evidence a little. He wouldn’t need to tell obvious lies, just forget a few key facts and stumble a few times with his answers. That would surely be enough.
In the underworld there is a loose group of ‘mates’ who try to look after each other when they get a chance – favours are called in, monies paid and advice given.
Williams had a mate in Sydney he thought could help him – Christopher Dale Flannery – known as Rentakill. Flannery and Williams had first teamed up as juvenile offenders and as young adults had pulled armed robberies together. In jail they sometimes shared a cell.
‘I knew Chris, I always found him to be a thorough gentleman.’ Alan, it must be said, was never a good judge of character, although he did add as an afterthought about Flannery: ‘He was also a murderer and a paid killer.
‘I ran into him in Melbourne and mentioned to him that I had been pinched by an undercover copper from Sydney. I asked him if he could do anything in regard to getting him to change his evidence or slow it down.
‘He said he would see what he could do, that he had a couple of jacks (police) in Sydney sweet. He said it would cost and I said I wasn’t worried about the cost side of it.’
According to evidence given in a series of court cases, Roger ‘The Dodger’ Rogerson approached Drury with a bribe offer on behalf of Williams, an offer Drury refused.
Williams may have been nasty but he wasn’t mean. The offer, for the standards of the early 1980s, was generous. ‘I offered $30,000 at one stage, $50,000 at another stage, $100,000 and an open ticket in the end.’
According to court testimony, Williams met with Flannery and Rogerson at a Sydney restaurant where he was told the bad news that the bribe offer had failed.
Williams was devastated. He knew he was looking at a long stretch inside. Then Flannery broke the silence: ‘Well, if it was me, I’d put him off (kill him).’
Williams didn’t immediately respond then just said: ‘That’s a big step’. But it didn’t take long for him to take it.
‘The deal was done in the restaurant,’ Williams said.
That deal, done in cold blood over cool beers, was to kill Drury for $100,000. The contract called for a down payment of $50,000 and the rest after the killing.
‘I was using the gear (heroin) at the time. If I had my full faculties there is no way I would have been involved in the plan.
‘I was a giant in the trade; I thought I was invincible, and unpinchable. But I stepped over the line with the Drury thing. It is something I will regret for the rest of my life.’
It was madness. But the fact they could even suggest that you could kill an undercover policeman in his home in front of his family and resume business as usual shows how out-of control Sydney was in the 1980s.
The corrupt syndicates – some linked to the highest police, legal and political networks – really believed they could fix anything.
The Drury shooting would prove to be the tipping point. The fallout would result in the destruction of many of the established criminal fiefdoms and the cosy police-gangland franchises that had controlled organised crime in Sydney for decades.
It would lead to setting up integrity commissions and external reviews. No longer would police be a law unto themselves.
Williams sent the deposit to Flannery and then waited for the inevitable. He did not know when and where Drury would be killed – he left that to his paid ‘experts’.
And Williams, through dumb luck, ended up with the perfect alibi. He had been picked up for speeding and had to produce his licence at the Greensborough police station. It proved he was in Melbourne at the time of the shooting.
Drury was gunned down while he was washing dishes at home. ‘When I knew he had been shot it was panic-stations. The heat was on. Basically I didn’t realise the repercussions this would cause. It was just a stupid thing to do.’
When Williams stopped being a stick-up merchant and moved into the drug trade he tried to stay clean and to treat it as a business. But soon he was just another junkie – a rich one with an endless supply – but still just a junkie.
‘I started smoking, and then it was up the snozzer and then up the Warwick Farm (arm). I was stoned all the time, I wasn’t thinking straight.’
Williams said that when he heard that Drury was shot he, ‘started getting into the gear (drugs) even heavier than ever.
‘I knew I was the number one suspect from day one. But I also knew that the police who had anything to do with me knew that I was not the sort of gangster who would premeditate this sort of murder.’
If so, the police were wrong.
For all his talk of remorse, at the time Williams was happy that Drury was out of the way and could not give evidence in his heroin trial.
‘I was more concerned about the matter at hand than Drury,’ he admitted later.
But the Sydney undercover detective, fighting for his life in hospital, made what everyone thought was a dying deposition outlining the attempted bribe by Rogerson.
Everyone, including his colleagues, expected him to die. He had been, after all, shot twice at point blank range. Even Flannery was convinced, assuring Williams: ‘He’s lost a lot of blood; I don’t think he’ll make it. He’s lost a lot of blood and is very weak.’
But this time Flannery, who had more experience with gunshot wounds than most surgeons, was wrong.
‘When he realised he was going to live, Chris said not to worry about sending the other $50,000. The job hadn’t been completed,’ Williams said.
Flannery may have been a cold-blooded killer but he expected to get paid only on results. But his honour did not extend to refunding the $50,000 he had already been paid. And Williams was not game to raise the subject.
The ultimate irony is that Drury recovered and gave evidence against Williams in his heroin trial but the drug dealer beat the charges on the evidence.
‘The whole plan was a waste.’
Drug dealing heavyweight or not, Williams was now the weak link. Once Drury made his statement implicating Rogerson in the attempted cop killing, all roads led to Melbourne.
Williams was the only one who could implicate Rogerson and Flannery in the attempted murder.
Within days stories in the media suggested the shooting related to the ‘Melbourne Job.’ Clearly this meant people on both sides of the law began to look for him.
Williams was still regularly reporting on bail and would be easy to find. He agreed to have a coffee with two well-known Victorian detectives in a Greek café in Melbourne.
One of them, the legendary thief-catcher Brian Murphy, told Williams that New South Wales police were out to kill him and he should not go home that night.
It was a bluff. ‘I just wanted to stir him up so he would talk,’ the streetwise Murphy said later.
It worked. ‘He went to a public phone and rang his wife, telling her to grab a few things and get out.’
Williams had few friends outside the underworld.
‘Squareheads’ tend to ask too many questions about unexplained wealth and lazy lifestyles. But Williams’ brother-in-law Lindsay Simpson was the exception.
A friendly man who worked in the building trade, Simpson would drink with Alan and not pry into areas where he was not welcome.
But on the day Williams was told he was a marked man, ‘good blokes’ like Simpson were the last thing on his mind.
‘I was told I was to be knocked. I was completely paranoid and I clean forgot that Lindsay was to come to my house that night,’ Williams said.
Waiting outside the house to kill Williams was Roy Pollitt, a crim known as the ‘Red Rat’. It was a nickname that was defamatory to rats, unfairly maligned ever since the Black Plague.
Pollitt had escaped from jail and was being harboured by ‘Mr Death’ – Dennis Bruce Allen – a prodigious Melbourne drug dealer and killer later found to have direct links to Rogerson.
It was Allen who commissioned Pollitt to kill Williams. When Pollitt saw a man pull up at Williams’ home in Lower Plenty, he drew his gun and made the victim kneel on the ground with his hands behind his head in a hostage pose. The innocent man kept trying to tell the gunman that it was a case of mistaken identity and that his name was Simpson.
It did him no good. He was shot dead in cold blood.
It may have begun as a case of mistaken identity but when Pollitt pulled the trigger he knew his victim was not Williams. He shot him to remove a potential witness.
‘Lindsay was a good family man. It took him eight years to have a baby with his wife. Six years of hospital and doctors’ appointments. Finally he has a kid and just before its first birthday, Lindsay is dead.’ Allen paid Pollitt a $5000 deposit in counterfeit notes for the hit and then refused to pay the rest after it was found he’d killed the wrong man.
Williams used to deal drugs with Allen, who died of chronic heart disease in 1987. ‘Dennis was a conniving man and particularly dangerous in his own little world of Richmond. But he lacked a lot of heart and he had to be juiced up to do anything. He was frightened of going to jail – every time he hit the nick he’d get the horrors.’
For Williams, the writing was on the wall. His life as one of the biggest drug dealers and most powerful men in the underworld was coming to an end. The man who could sit in a Sydney restaurant and effectively sign a death warrant for a detective, was now frightened and on the run.
He had already confessed to Murphy that he had tried to bribe Drury but still denied he was involved in the murder attempt.
Williams knew it was only a matter of time before the next set of killers came knocking. His co-offender Jack Richardson was dead. His brother-in-law Lindsay Simpson was also dead. He knew he would be next unless he could cut a deal.
He was placed on the top ten most wanted list and arrested in Melbourne. He went to Sydney, and in 1986 he quietly pleaded guilty to conspiracy to attempt to bribe Drury.
Ironically, only months earlier, Roger Rogerson pleaded not guilty to similar charges and was acquitted.
Williams was given a 12-month suspended sentence but if he thought that would be the end of the matter, he was wrong.
He moved to the Northern Territory and gave up the drugs – at least temporarily – working for nearly eight months as a plant operator.
Then a New South Wales police task force, code named ‘Omega’ came knocking. They were the team Commissioner John Avery had selected to find the would-be killers of Drury.
The two targets were Rogerson and Williams. ‘When I was arrested in the Territory I was told: “The deal is this, you can either do a life lagging over a crooked copper or you can tell us what happened and jump the box (give evidence) against him”.
‘I knew I was there to be knocked.’
Williams pleaded guilty to conspiracy to murder Drury and was sentenced to fourteen years jail.
Then he gave evidence in one of the most publicised criminal trials in Australian history.
Rogerson, a highly decorated and brave New South Wales detective, was charged with plotting to kill a brother policeman. Williams, a known criminal, was the key witness alleging that Rogerson was guilty.
In the end, the jury chose to acquit Rogerson, who had always maintained his innocence.
Rogerson was sacked from the force over an unrelated matter.
Williams found himself behind bars after he confessed while the man he claimed was his partner in crime walked free.
‘I am not bitter about it. I was part of the conspiracy and I have paid the price,’ Williams would say. He served four years, six months before he was released.
‘I feel like a new person. It’s the first time I don’t have to look over my shoulder. I have been offered a new identity but I don’t think I need it.
‘Roger beat the charges, good luck to him. I am dirty on him, but good luck to him. I’m just happy that it’s over for me.’
Rogerson was later jailed for conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. The charge related to the unexplained deposit of $110,000 in false bank accounts. Key evidence given against the former star detective came from a protected witness ‘Miss Jones’, who had once worked for Dennis Allen.
Williams says he regrets the attempt on Drury’s life but doesn’t believe he broke any codes by going after a detective.
‘The code was broken by some New South Wales police years ago, long before I ever came on the scene. Some of them declared open season on some crooks.’ He said some corrupt New South Wales police were prepared to kill to protect their corrupt empires.
‘Basically it was down and out murder because they created ripples in the kickback scheme of making a quid.’
Of Drury, he says: ‘I can understand if he was bitter to the day he died. But I just hope he is remembered as a bloke who stuck to his guns and was vindicated in what he did.’
Williams’ attempts to stay off ‘the gear’ failed and he returned to becoming a hopeless drug addict.
Riddled with hepatitis and suspected of having Aids, he spent his last weeks trying to kill the shrewd Melbourne policeman who unwittingly saved his life – Brian Murphy.
It was Murphy who fabricated the story that New South Wales police were to kill him at home. If he hadn’t, Williams would have headed home on 18 September 1984 and would almost certainly have been murdered by ‘Red Rat’ Pollitt.
Williams found a gun but died in August 2001 before he could use it. A few days earlier he missed Murphy in a Carlton restaurant by a matter of minutes.
Timing was never his strong suit.