MICK SAYERS’ SHORT CUT TO THE MORGUE
But in New South Wales
some police just weren’t
that curious.
TO the second hand car dealer he looked like another tyre kicker. He tried to hide his boredom when the rough-looking punter asked the price of the Mercedes coupe sitting in the busy Parramatta Road lot. Then he tried to hide his look of surprise when the customer produced the required $36,500 – in cash – from a paper bag.
But the customer wasn’t finished. He wanted the car to be fitted with the personalised number plate MARIAN because he was buying the Merc for his girlfriend, Marian Ware.
It was 20 December 1983 and Michael Sayers was buying the car as a last-minute Christmas present.
That was the sort of guy he was. But then again, prodigious drug dealers can afford to be impulsive and generous when the mood strikes.
It had been a good year and better was to come. Just over twelve months later he bought himself his own present – a new Mercedes. A snip at $77,000.
Business was good and Mick was flying – for the moment.
Sayers was an old-school Melbourne armed robber who saw drugs as the short cut to wealth and Sydney as the land of opportunity.
But, unfortunately for Mick, he was also seen as a friend of Chris Flannery and that was a short cut to the morgue.
His first major conviction had been in 1969 for an armed robbery in Melbourne where he was sentenced to a minimum of six years.
When he was released Sayers moved to Sydney, where he became a burglar before graduating to drug trafficking – selling cocaine, cannabis and heroin. He wasn’t fussy, or maybe he was just multi-skilled.
Even though he was 38 and had been charged 25 times in Victoria and New South Wales he had no plans to reform any time soon.
And why would he? In just two years the Melbourne battler had turned himself into a millionaire.
He owned two adjacent houses in Kean Street, Caulfield. He bought the second one for $95,000 in 1984 just weeks before he was finally busted for drug trafficking.
His Sydney house in Bronte was worth $250,000 when he bought it in September 1983 and he had no hesitation pouring in another $100,000 for renovations. He also had an assortment of investment properties scattered around Sydney.
In July 1984 he was charged with drug trafficking, but after four months was finally granted bail. As it turned out he would have been better off if he had stayed inside.
The man who put-up the $20,000 bail was a registered bookmaker who wouldn’t have tipped that his mate was soon to be shot.
Saturday 16 February 1985 had been a typical day for the drug dealer, horse owner, SP bookmaker, mad punter and man about town.
Sayers had been to the Canterbury races during the day with Marian Ware and his bookie mate. Following the races they picked up the bookie’s wife and went out to a Pitt Street restaurant.
After dropping off the couple, Sayers and Ware returned to their Hewlett Street home (just a few hundred metres from the iconic Bondi Beach) around 9.55pm. He pulled into the driveway, left the motor running and hopped out to open the garage door.
According to Ware, there were several pops similar to a car backfiring. Sayers continued walking, then stopped and looked as if he were trying to determine the direction of the noise.
As shots started to hit the garage door, Sayers realised he was under attack. He moved from the garage and crouched behind the front mudguard of his Mercedes. He then moved to the back of the car and bolted towards Bondi Beach.
Ware watched him run before seeing him stumble to the ground at precisely the wrong moment. Then, as if in slow motion, a masked gunman walked over and fired into the helpless victim.
Sayers was shot twice in the back, with one bullet passing through both lungs and nicking the aorta.
Ware would swear the man she saw fire the shot was armed with a rifle. The New South Wales murder taskforce, set up to investigate the gangland killings, believed she had to be mistaken.
Investigating police would establish the hit team had planned to shoot him from a distance but missed. They then had to chase him to finish the job.
Police found fragments from three .22 bullets in the garage and believed from the angle of the entry points they had been fired from two locations.
As no spent cartridges were recovered, police wrongly concluded the guns were revolvers that would not spit out the spent cartridges.
‘The bullet taken from the body of Sayers is probably of .38 or .357 Magnum calibre … the fact that no fired cartridge cases were found at the scene is indicative that the firearms were revolvers.’ This would be in conflict with Marian Ware’s description of a rifle but there does not appear to be any other explanation given the number of shots fired.
Unless of course the hit men picked up the spent shells or police simply didn’t look hard enough.
So who was Mick Sayers?
He was rumoured to be one of the biggest SP bookmakers in Sydney until he moved into the drug business.
He owned five racehorses valued at $45,000, including the prophetically named Final Episode. While under surveillance he was seen to lose up to $10,000 a night playing Russian poker without apparent concern. He was also a regular at a Double-Bay card-school run by Federal Police target, Graham ‘Croc’ Palmer.
As a prolific SP bookmaker he was posthumously, and perhaps conveniently, blamed for one of Australia’s most notorious racing scams – the Fine Cotton Affair.
In August 1984 city racehorse Bold Personality was swapped for the bush plodder Fine Cotton in a race at Eagle Farm in Brisbane. More than $1 million were wagered, pushing the odds from 33/1 to 7/2.
Many people were implicated and some of those said Sayers was the driving force behind the rort. But, of course, by that time he was dead and could not defend himself. In New South Wales the only thing better than a live ring-in is a dead scapegoat.
Two months before the Fine Cotton ring-in, police raided his Bronte home and arrested Sayers’ father over an SP operation. Police claimed the cash turnover for the day was $81,000.
Certainly while the drug business was good Sayers was a big spender who owed money around town. He was paying back $400,000 to his good mate Danny Chubb at $20,000 a week but that debt had died when Danny did just a few weeks earlier.
Sayers owed an SP bookmaker $120,000 and it was eventually agreed he would settle at a meeting at a Double Bay hotel in May 1984.
The bookmaker saw Sayers approach carrying a brief case when Mick was intercepted by two men in suits and taken away.
Later a shaken Sayers returned with the briefcase, which was now empty. Mick told the bookmaker that Federal detectives had grabbed him but agreed not to lay drug trafficking charges in return for the $120,000.
It would later be established that the ‘detectives’ were Flannery and a mate and the ‘arrest’ was just another Sayers scam.
But Sayers and Flannery were not always play-acting. They were the prime suspects for the murder of Melbourne crook turned Sydney drug dealer, Les Cole.
Leslie John Cole was shot in the garage of his Sydney home 10 November 1982. He had survived an attempt two months earlier but this time he was shot twice in the chest and once behind the right ear.
Eighteen years later his son, Mark Moran, would be shot dead outside his Melbourne home in similar circumstances.
Police said Cole was aligned with the Melbourne Kane Clan, the standover family involved in its own underworld war. Intriguingly Cole had been in Melbourne the day before he was killed, and just over two weeks later Brian Kane was shot dead in Brunswick.
Were the deaths connected or was it coincidental? The trouble was that each murder was investigated by a different police force that often concealed information from each other. So the truth is no-one will ever know the truth.
DESPITE his debts, his occupation and his recent drug charges Sayers appeared to be relaxed, that is, until the attempted murder of Flannery.
His good friend Danny Chubb had been shot dead and then Flannery miraculously survived an attack where 30 shots were fired at him. Sayers was quickly on the phone to assure Chris he had nothing to do with the attack.
Sayers knew that as crooks were being asked to take sides he would be seen as a potential ally of Rentakill and as such a threat to be neutralised.
But Flannery and Sayers were no longer close and Mick was as concerned about his so-called mate as his known enemies.
According to Kath Flannery, ‘Chris had a terrible fallout with Michael Sayers.’ As usual, it was over money. Flannery had loaned Sayers $15,000 at 100 percent interest and expected $30,000 back. And you reckon the Reserve Bank is tough.
Kath said Mick was slow to return the money and this broke up the friendship.
But she also claimed George Freeman wanted Sayers killed and planned to use Flannery as the hit man. According to her, Freeman told her husband that Sayers planned to kill Flannery and he should get in first.
Kath said Freeman gave him a Valiant, a gun and a false beard to do the job. Tellingly, Rentakill took them – at least initially.
Eventually Flannery met Sayers to discuss the bad blood between them. ‘They worked it out and everything was fine. Chris went and gave George the gun back and the car. George wasn’t happy about it all and that was the start and the end for Chris.’
If the meeting were designed to reassure Sayers, it didn’t work. He came back and told his girlfriend, ‘If I die, Chris Flannery is responsible.’
But on the day of the killing, Flannery had an alibi. He was dining in an upmarket Surfers Paradise restaurant with his old mentor Ron Feeney, from Melbourne’s Mickey’s Disco. Flannery even paid with his American Express card.
So if it weren’t Chris, then who did it?
It was not so much a suspect but a suspect car that gave police their best lead.
A week before the murder a panel van pulled up in the street and the driver asked if Mick Sayers lived here. The man then said something that stuck with the witness, ‘I’m a heavy, don’t mess with me.’
On the night of the killing a neighbour saw a panel van parked near Sayers’ house – hardly unusual considering how close they were to Bondi Beach.
But what made the car stick in the mind of the resident was that he noticed the two men in the panel van were not ‘surfietypes’ but fit men aged between 30 and 40.
Just after the shooting a man and a woman saw a Holden HQ panel van driving from the area with its lights off – only to relight them as it moved away.
Police eventually concluded the two gunmen killed Sayers and then ran through a vacant block to Bronte Marine Drive, jumped into a dark coloured panel van and drove away.
Coincidently Tom Domican owned a Holden HQ panel van just like the one seen opposite Sayers’ home. But while Tom was lucky with court appearances, (he was charged with one murder, one attempted murder and five counts of conspiracy to murder – and beat the lot), he was unlucky with cars.
On 28 January – the day after the attack on Flannery – Tom reported his car stolen. It was a Mazda – the same type alleged to have been used by the hit team in their failed attempt to kill the Melbourne gangster.
Now someone of Domican’s status could not be expected to rely on public transport so on 29 January – the day after Tom’s car went missing – someone bought a 1973 HQ Holden Panel Van (GQD-603) from a motor auctions company for $2,850 cash, under the name of Kevin Ryan.
The murder taskforce was able to establish that Domican sold the same panel van to a policeman, just a day after the Sayers murder for the under-the-odds price of $400 (this was the value of a rifle Domican had received from the policeman).
The car was parked just a couple of streets from the murder scene in Jackman Street, Bondi and the helpful Tommy Domican produced the keys and drove the car to the policeman’s house.
It was the same policeman who had attempted to provide information on Flannery to Domican just before the murder attempt on Rentakill.
The policeman was apparently unable or unwilling to see the obvious links. He was happy to do business with Tough Tom, even giving the notorious Sydney identity his address so he could drive the car to his house.
The experienced investigator didn’t seem to wonder why someone like Domican would sell him the car for such a bargain basement price – at a massive discount of nearly 80 percent.
But in New South Wales some police just weren’t that curious.
Later when the policeman realised the car may have been used in a murder, he helped conceal it. Despite this, and his questionable relationship with Domican, the taskforce remained sympathetic saying while the actions were ‘rather silly, they do not disclose any criminal offences.’
Others might disagree.
The taskforce effectively discounted the theory Sayers was killed over his many debts. The dealer may have owed money but he had shown time and again the capacity to make bucketloads of it. He was paying back Chubb and had previously paid gambling debts.
But once he was dead no-one was going to get paid.
The New South Wales police murder taskforce concluded, ‘Although heavily indebted to a number of persons, to have Sayers murdered would have been of little value, other than to exhibit to others the folly of not settling promptly … It is more feasible that Domican, being unable to locate Flannery, has identified Sayers as his ally and at the same time settled an old score. The evidence would tend to suggest that the Holden van recovered during the course of the investigation is the vehicle used in the murder. Should that be correct then there is evidence which places Domican and an associate in possession of that vehicle 12 hours after the killing.’
Certainly there was logic to support the police view that to kill Sayers over a debt would be self-defeating, as the debt would die with him. But whoever said drug dealers were logical?
In Sydney at the time the established underworld pecking order had collapsed. In January 1985 one of Sydney’s most influential gangsters, Frederick Charles (Paddles) Anderson, had died of natural causes leaving a void many wanted to fill.
The new breed of drug dealers was challenging the men who had controlled illegal gambling for decades under the umbrella of police corruption.
Plus, Sayers had been charged with drug trafficking and if convicted he wouldn’t be able to pay his debt. Maybe he would be better as a dead-set example of why it could be fatal to fall behind, than to leave him to a long prison term.
The New South Wales murder taskforce produced some impressive work. Its investigators concluded the killers were Tom Domican and his good mate, Roy Thurgar. But they lacked the evidence to lay charges.
It was one of the cases that could have gone no-where. The homicide squad couldn’t create the breakthrough and then a second investigation by the murder taskforce couldn’t press charges.
But there was another group of investigators who had moved into offices in Sydney. The National Crime Authority was a new agency, one with some of the powers of a Royal Commission. This was hardly surprising as it was born out of political necessity following the findings from two judicial inquiries. One was headed up by Melbourne QC Frank Costigan who looked into the crime-riddled Painters and Dockers Union. The second, by Justice Don Stewart into drug trafficking and the Nugan Hand merchant bank.
Both men were very different and ran their inquiries very differently. But they concluded that corruption, infighting and lack of powers left law enforcement with little chance of effectively investigating organised crime.
The National Crime Authority was an attempt to deal with the problems on a national basis using state and federal resources. Don Stewart was its first head and the National Crime Authority’s initial chief investigator was the former head of the Melbourne homicide squad, Carl Mengler.
Mengler, whose warm personality and ready laugh concealed a determination to expose corruption, was tasked with reinvestigating the Sydney murders in an operation code named Curtains.
Senior Sydney police did not welcome the National Crime Authority investigation for several reasons. Firstly, no police force would want the new boys on the block to succeed where they had failed. And secondly, they knew if the full story were told the chronic corruption of New South Wales dirtiest could no longer be hidden in dark places.
Within the National Crime Authority was a carefully positioned New South Wales mole, who reported back on a daily basis to senior Sydney police on the progress of the supposedly secret operation.
In February 1986 Mengler told his team they had to go back to the beginning. He didn’t want them just to read existing statements and pick holes in the grammar. He wanted them to get out of their air- conditioned offices and back on the streets. He told them they must treat the old crime scenes as active sites and imagine the murders had just been committed.
Some of the team assigned to look at the Sayers murder were not convinced, but Mengler made them an offer they couldn’t refuse – get on with it or get out.
The National Crime Authority was seen as the law enforcement body of the future. It had coercive powers, bugging equipment and hand-picked investigators but it was old-fashioned policing and a ballpoint pen that would create the first breakthrough.
In August one National Crime Authority detective placed his pen in the bullet holes in the garage door of Sayers’ house and then followed the invisible line back to the vacant block across the road.
Using simple garden tools, the police dug up two spent .223 WW Special cartridge cases. New South Wales police, using metal detectors, had previously searched the area but had drawn a blank.
Tests found the bullets were fired from a 5.56mm Colt selfloading assault rifle. The second breakthrough came when rifling marks on the cartridges were found to match a weapon seized a year earlier from the Hunter Valley property of major drug dealer, Barry McCann. The bullets also proved a match to the shots fired at Flannery in the failed murder attempt in January 1985.
McCann hated Flannery and was also a great mate of Domican.
Snap.
So why would McCann be involved?
McCann and Flannery fell out after a violent confrontation in the Lansdowne Hotel. There are several versions of what happened. Kath Flannery claims that during an argument, McCann’s wife threatened to glass Flannery who responded with a short right to her jaw that left it swollen and badly bruised.
Another man produced a shotgun and the Flannerys decided to take their custom elsewhere.
They were banned from that day on from returning to the pub. This was hardly surprising, as it was owned by McCann.
Later Chris sent flowers as a form of apology. Who says chivalry is dead?
And, according to Kath, McCann had also crossed Sayers off his Christmas card list.
‘Michael Sayers was killed because he ripped off McCann for $250,000 worth of hash outside the Lansdowne Hotel in the boot of the car.’
Many colourful characters enjoyed the hotel. Bob Trimbole’s son, Craig, provided the amusement machines in the bar and Aussie Bob was an occasional patron.
McCann was big and getting bigger. He was able to buy a 1000-hectare horse stud in the Hunter Valley for $450,000 cash.
One of McCann’s team was to brag that he threw away his carpet underlay and replaced it with $100 notes – to conceal $3 million.
The boss was said to have kept up to $4 million in cash on his property.
So who ordered Sayers death? The National Crime Authority alleged that McCann and four others decided he had to die – ostensibly because he owed Barry $400,000.
But Sayers still had plenty and could have at least made a part payment, so it wasn’t purely the money. McCann had plenty of that. It was a statement – a show of strength directed to old school gangster and rival drug dealer Neddy Smith – that he was a force to be reckoned with.
One of the men eventually charged over the Sayers murder was former boxer turned gunman Ray Thurgar, although the case was thrown out by a magistrate due to lack of evidence.
By 1990 Thurgar had lost his strong silent image and had became chatty with the Independent Commission Against Corruption, whose investigators visited him inside Long Bay Jail at least four times.
In December 1990 he was released from prison declaring he would make a clean start by buying a small laundromat in Randwick. But in May 1991 he was gunned down outside his business in Alison Road.
In August 1991 Tom Domican, Victor John Camilleri, 31, and Kevin Victor Theobald, 32, were found not guilty of conspiring to murder Sayers.
One of the major sticking points was the use of a police informer and notorious liar as a key witness.
The evidence about the discovery of the bullets at the scene was also contested, with the defence asking why it took so long to find the key evidence.
The jury heard that National Crime Authority officers found the spent cartridge shells 18 months after Sayers was shot.
National Crime Authority Inspector Geoffery Schuberg, admitted he wasn’t going to search, but his supervisor ordered it ‘in no uncertain terms’ on 15 August 1986.
They then found the bullets within an hour.
When asked why he had not previously searched the area, Schuberg said, ’I’d accepted the search had been carried out at the start of the murder investigation. I honestly didn’t believe anything would be found 18 months after the murder.’
The main target of Operation Curtains was Tom Domican and in October 1986 he was charged with the attempted murder of Flannery.
But the charges kept coming, including conspiring to murder Flannery and conspiring to murder his wife, Kath.
He was charged with the murder of Sayers, and three further murder conspiracy charges.
Many thought that he would be buried under the weight of charges but Domican, the former London bouncer, fought and fought.
Even when he was convicted of the attempted murder of Flannery and sentenced to 14 years he vowed to clear his name. One by one he was acquitted of the charges and after a battle that went all the way to the High Court, the Flannery conviction was quashed.
Understandably bitter, he told accomplished Sydney journalist Neil Mercer in 2003: ‘It was all political to stop me saying anything about the Labor Party, to destroy my credibility. The National Crime Authority was part of all that gang war shit, then with the help of the media they built me up into this underworld figure.’
So what does McCann say about the claims?
Not much.
He was shot around 30 times in a Marrickville park on 27 December 1987.
McCann had a reputation as a Sydney kneecapper, yet the autopsy showed that while McCann had been riddled with bullets, his knees remained intact.
Irony in a full metal jacket.