‘At least it was quick … in and out.’
—Lawyer for Raylene Szarvak
LIKE a lot of married couples, when the Szarvaks needed a break from their brood they asked a relative to babysit. But for the four Szarvak children, when Mum and Dad cut out into the night on their evening off it wasn’t for a movie, a meal or a show. Their parents’ nightlife was less conventional. On their nights out, mum Raylene—a statuesque brunette—and dad Antony—bald with a bushy goatee beard—would make sure they were packing a trusty Italian-made Armi Jager revolving carbine that had been sawn off and adapted into a handgun. The cold steel measured 30 centimetres from handle to tip. Mum and Dad had given it the affectionate name ‘Rosie’. Dad would gun the engine on either his green Kawasaki trail bike or the family’s red four-wheel drive, and a doting grandparent would watch the little tackers drift off to sleep as Mum and Dad tore away into their exotic nightlife.
In just a few weeks in 2008, Ma and Pa Szarvak tore through Melbourne, robbing at gunpoint pokies hotel after pokies hotel and leaving behind a trail of shocked punters, befuddled police, shaken cashiers and empty registers.The seeds of the suburban parents’ unique robbery rampage had been sown years earlier. Raylene had rebelled against her strict Maltese Catholic upbringing. She was a teenage high-school student at Kings Park when she met Antony Szarvak—he was eight years older and they instantly hit it off. Her parents watched on with concern as teenage Raylene fell for the charismatic older man who had survived a rough childhood. They worried the older man may have been a corrupting influence on their ‘little angel’. They may have had the wrong end of the stick. Despite the parental concerns, on many fronts Raylene and Antony’s life together was traditional. They married and had four kids. Raylene stayed at home looking after hubby and the brood and referred to her role as ‘homemaker’. But the Szarvaks were not traditional on all fronts. Between school runs and grocery shopping they used amphetamines. Antony was a full-blown ice addict and Raylene described the quantity of drugs she imbibed as ‘ridiculous’. Jobless, without the rent and needing money to shop for the kids, the somewhat traditional suburban couple took a further leap into the unorthodox.
One is the loneliest number …
IT WAS early on a Sunday night on 1 June 2008 when the married couple started their armed robbery spree. They hit Cellarbrations liquor store in the Victorian suburb of Delahey at 7.30 p.m. Antony lifted his jacket to show the shopkeeper the gun tucked in the front of his pants. He threw the shopkeeper a material bag and demanded she fill it from the register. While the shopkeeper shoved notes in the bag, Raylene leant over and grabbed the tray insert from the till and legged it. By the time Raylene and Antony returned to their Bacchus Marsh family home and relieved the babysitter, they were $900 richer. All police had was a bit of grainy camera footage outside the shop showing one of the bandits had a goatee. The booty wasn’t much for the risks involved but it was a start. And for the ice-addicted couple it would help buy a decent mound of amphetamines.
It takes two to tango …
THE Delahey bottle shop was just practice. Raylene and Antony embarked on their second job less than three days later. This time they knocked over a hotel—and one with a security guard at that. Their first robbery had gone down in the early evening but the night they took the Glengala Hotel in Sunshine West they must have had the babysitter booked all night—it went down at 3.57 a.m. The Szarvaks had parked at a footy club near the venue. Raylene had wrapped a black scarf around her face. She stormed into the pokies venue and, though unarmed herself, demanded of the security guard: ‘Don’t move’. Antony, wearing a balaclava, pulled out Rosie and pointed her at the guard to reinforce the point. The bandits fronted the cashier counter and demanded the cashier and manager hand over the loot. The staff complied and passed over dump canisters from the pokie machines containing $2766 worth of coins and notes. House loses. Rosie ensured that no civilian, pokies zombie or worker drone decided to play hero. It was an easy take and cashed-up Raylene and Antony bolted across a reserve to their getaway vehicle. Police later brought in sniffer dogs but all they found was Raylene’s scarf dropped in the reserve and some departing tyre tracks.
Third time’s a charm …
SIX days later, they struck again. The Szarvaks robbed the St Albans Sports Club in Kings Park at ten minutes to midnight. Their routine had evolved and this time both were wearing motorbike helmets. In addition to the head gear, Raylene was also disguising her face with a scarf. She was the one wielding Rosie this time and brandished it at the cashier’s counter. ‘I’ll shoot you. Put your hands up,’ she said. Antony, with a patriotic Australian flag on his helmet, shouted at the other patrons to get on the ground. Raylene seemed to enjoy it all too much and Antony never again let her have the gun on their raids. He later said she enjoyed the adrenaline rush of the crimes and ‘got off’ on doing the robberies. She in turn said his gun was ‘like his second appendage’ because everywhere it went, he went. They left on their very loud motorbike with $1785.15.
While scarves and helmets might cover their faces, there was a clue to the bandits’ identity painted on their green Kawasaki but it was too small to be noticed by witnesses or captured on CCTV. On Antony’s bike were several cartoons of himself in all his beardy, squinty, snaggle-toothed, ice-fiend glory, wearing a crown under the words ‘King Tony’. The drawings of the bald, goateed monarch were pretty accurate—if they had been seen they could have served as a kind of cartoon identikit.
Four on the floor …
SIX days later the ma-and-pa bandits walked through the front door of the Deer Park Hotel in the suburb of the same name at 3.40 a.m. Raylene had her game-face on. She shoved a male patron queuing at the cashier’s counter out of the way. Her hubby backed her up, pointing Rosie at the security guard and patrons. When the cashier nervously fumbled with money in the drawer Raylene shouted at Antony: ‘Get the gun on him!’ They left, bolting from the hotel with $3719.60 in Raylene’s bag.
Five alive …
FOR THEIR final June robbery—their fifth for the month in a prolific effort—they took Rosie to the Rifle Club Hotel in Williamstown. Seeing the interlopers in helmets and balaclavas barging into the venue, the woman working at the cashier’s office slammed the till shut and reached for the hold-up alarm. Raylene rushed her and pushed her hand away from the alarm trigger, saying ‘Don’t touch it,’ before getting aggressive and banging on the counter. After ordering customers to lie on the ground, Antony impatiently pointed the sawn-off at the cashier who was taking too long trying to re-open the cash drawer. Raylene snatched the money from her, the pair fleeing—this time with the lesser amount of $1650.
Six and (not) out …
A WEEK later the Bonnie and Clyde of Bacchus Marsh changed their modus operandi by hitting a post office—not a pokies palace—in Deer Park at quarter-past-four in the afternoon. It was less than an hour after the last school bell had rung. They were both wearing balaclavas as beanies and rolled them down before entering the store. Antony pointed the gun and Raylene stretched over the counter and helped herself to the cash from the drawers. The stamp-and-envelope trade must be lucrative: the withdrawal was just three dollars short of $13 000.Three days later both Szarvaks and a friend of Antony’s called Shayne Dumesney were driving around in the Szarvaks’ red four-wheel drive when they were pulled over by police. In answer to the officers’ casual inquiries, Antony made chitchat and told the boys in blue they had just been at the Palms Hotel in Footscray playing the pokies and his missus Raylene had even had a small win. More likely they had been casing the joint and the coincidental police intercept had saved the Palms Hotel—which they then never robbed—from having an even bigger loss. The officers let them go, oblivious to their real passion for pokies palaces and Antony’s missus’s more brutal and sure-fire method to beat the house.
Seven …
PERHAPS spooked by their coincidental brush with police and wondering if someone was on their trail, the Szarvaks waited a few weeks before their seventh heist. This time operating in a slightly more yuppie suburb they stormed Yarraville’s Victoria On Hyde hotel at 6.30 p.m. on 28 July 2008. It was just three days before Raylene’s twenty-eighth birthday and she was doing what she seemed to love best. While Antony really had the gun, an unarmed Raylene shouted to patrons that she had a gun and to get on the floor. They took $6299—a hefty early birthday present—and fled on foot across the rear carpark to their waiting vehicle. Again, there were few crumbs left for police to successfully track down the serial armed robbers with the big handgun who were rapidly becoming a menace and an embarrassment to police investigators. At one or two of the robbery scenes security cameras or witnesses had got a bit of a look at Antony but for investigators trying to identify a goateed man with some criminal form in Melbourne’s western suburbs, they may as well have been playing Where’s Wally?
Eight …
ARMED robbery number eight did not go so smoothly. The Szarvaks entered the St Albans Hotel at the same time and through the same door as a little old lady leaving the venue. The bandits could not risk that the woman might have noticed their get-up and could raise the alarm once out on the street. Antony ushered her back into the venue’s gaming area. Then as Raylene made a beeline for her quarry the male cashier locked himself in a rear office behind the cashier area. Raylene had brought a white plastic bag with her and she intended to fill it with loot. She tried for a while to reach over the counter’s glass security screen but to no avail. Eventually the pair had to flee empty-handed. Raylene dropped her empty plastic bag in the carpark on the way out. Police later found it there and grabbed it for DNA. It was only a small crumb, especially since she had been wearing gloves, but detectives also got a more promising lead from the scene. An eagle-eyed witness told police he saw two figures running from the hotel about the time of the attempted robbery and spotted at least one of them get into a maroon four-wheel drive. The car was described as having a big black bullbar and a broken driver’s side headlight patched up with masking tape.
Nine …
FRIENDS described Raylene as a devoted mum. But occasionally when the Szarvaks were itching for an armed robbery and couldn’t get a babysitter, police came to suspect they simply left their four pre-school- and primary-school-aged children (aged from about two to nine years old) asleep at home alone. The Szarvaks were undeterred by their last botched robbery. They struck again the very next night in the exact same suburb holding up the St Albans Kings Road Liquor store. As was standard practice, Antony waved the gun and Raylene made the demands. When the attendant took too long moving the cash from the register Raylene leant over the counter for self-service and filled the canvas bag herself. They left with $1150.
After getting the witness account from an eagle-eyed observer near the St Albans Hotel, police obtained private surveillance footage from a business near that crime scene. On the footage they identified a red Holden Jackaroo four-wheel drive. There was no number plate but by trawling through police running sheets and sharing intelligence, investigators matched the vehicle to the earlier random police pull-over of the Szarvaks. The cops were closing in. Investigators tracked the vehicle to its registered address in Bacchus Marsh and found it parked on the Szarvaks’ front lawn. There were plenty of similar cars all over the state but the one police found at the Szarvaks’ had masking tape holding up the broken driver’s side headlight. Police had one thought: Jackpot.
Ten …
TWO days after the Szarvaks’ last effort—robbery number nine at the Kings Road bottle shop—police secretly planted a tracking device on the couple’s four-wheel drive. Three days after the bottle shop raid, their spree hit double digits. Perhaps Raylene had been overusing relatives as babysitters during her personal crime wave of the last ten weeks because for robbery number ten she couldn’t make the engagement and had to stay home. Or maybe Antony was concerned his wifey was doing it just for the kicks and not the kickbacks and her aggression could get them into trouble. Either way, it was Antony and his mate Shayne Dumesney who landed on the Red Lion Hotel in the main street of Ballarat—well out of their western suburbs hunting ground—at 2.05 a.m. on Saturday 8 August 2008.
Shayne, a married labourer from the western suburb of Kurunjang, had met Antony early in 2008. They had common interests. Shayne had helped fix Antony’s motorbike and over time followed his friend Antony into using ice. Shortly after came ice addiction and drug debts. The pair would hang out at the Szarvaks’ Bacchus Marsh house. Antony would be kicking back cleaning his gun, waving thick wads of cash around and discussing the ease of ‘doing pokie venues’ and inevitably cash-strapped, ice-addicted Shayne followed his new mate down that path too.
Inside the Red Lion, Shayne approached the cashier unarmed and demanded money. The cashier laughed. Antony appeared behind Shayne with Rosie and the cashier stopped laughing. The pair left with $5071.05 in thousand-dollar rolls and coins. The tracking device told the whole tale to police. The monitored vehicle journeyed from Bacchus Marsh to Ballarat. It then made four trips past the Red Lion in the minutes before the robbery so the crooks could case out their target. After the hold-up, the car then travelled back to Bacchus Marsh, stopping at a petrol station on the way where Shayne and Antony were captured on camera wearing the same clothes as the men who robbed the Red Lion. The tracking device gave police strong circumstantial evidence for the criminal outfit’s tenth strike. Officers had strongly suspected all ten raids were linked. Now they were convinced they knew the people behind the masks at all the other nine raids. Glee mixed with nerves as investigators came to terms with the size of the crime spree they were on the verge of busting.
Legs eleven …
FOUR DAYS later and oblivious to the walls closing in on them, Antony, Raylene and Shayne made their first foray—possibly to blur their modus operandi—into the eastern suburbs. Shayne’s wife had found his share of the last robbery, about $2000, and had used it to pay off debts with Cash Converters—the favoured ATM of desperate druggies everywhere. He needed a top-up. The trio drove to the Bakers Arms Hotel in Abbotsford, near Richmond, in the early hours of the morning. This time Raylene was to stay in the car and drive getaway, Shayne was to be ‘the mouthpiece’ barking orders and Antony would wield Rosie. But as the two men approached the pub’s front door a shop alarm sounded. They also noticed a security guard standing on the opposite side of the road. Spooked, they hastily returned to their car. When they tried again a short time later, the pub was closed. The trio then went pub-hopping through Kew, Preston, Northcote, Essendon, Maribyrnong and St Albans looking for an open hotel to rob. They had no luck and with jangled nerves and empty pockets they had to call it a night.
Dirty dozen
THE NEXT morning the trio were back at the Bakers Arms, only this time a little bit earlier than last drinks. But again the front door was locked. As the two men made their way back to the vehicle, police, including Special Operations Group officers, swooped. Antony saw the Soggies, turned, and bolted. He tossed Rosie into a resident’s garden bed and also dumped a black bag and balaclava. The two men were tasered and Raylene was pulled out of the four-wheel drive—all three were arrested. It was immediately clear to the trio of bandits that this was no happy coincidence for police—they realised that they had been found out earlier and were being watched. The penny dropped that the security guard Antony saw the night before was probably a cop—which was something he should have noticed, taken heed of and not returned to the scene.
(Early) retirement …
WITH THEIR targets in custody, officers needed to gather enough detail to prove beyond a reasonable doubt—perhaps in the face of blanket denials—that the suburban mum-and-dad team were responsible for the armed robbery spree that had cut a swathe through the city.
After her arrest, officers escorted Raylene back to her house. What they found on the raid matched the evidentiary crumbs that police had patiently gathered while pokies venues and authorities were still eating the Szarvaks’ dust. Officers found the green Kawasaki, the helmets and a walk-in wardrobe off the master bedroom crammed full of the bandits’ idea of sartorial extravagance—an extensive collection of Adidas tracksuit pants. Some of Rosie’s ammunition was also found in a small safe at the home. As police pieced their case together they found Antony was in the habit of making calls on his mobile shortly after successful stings. In each case the call used a nearby mobile phone tower, putting him in the vicinity of each of the crime scenes in the immediate aftermath of the armed robberies. The robbers had no idea how they had been found out. Antony initially thought Shayne’s wife had spilled the beans on their operation and after they were all arrested, Antony unsuccessfully tried to get Shayne to say he was Rosie’s owner and cop the consequent firearms charges. In return, Antony promised to give Shayne his motorbike, replete with original King Tony cartoons. Shayne passed on the offer.
Detective Sergeant Stuart Bailey (who Badlands readers may remember foiling the kill-plot in ‘Trouble in Paradise’) coaxed some vital admissions out of Raylene at the house. She admitted, for instance, that the helmets at her house had been used in an armed robbery and she made an informal admission of involvement in the Deer Park armed robbery and the Bakers Arms robbery attempt. She had otherwise made a ‘no comment’ interview with police on all other aspects. Once she got lawyered-up she decided to resist the police case and fight her charges. For the moment Antony too was keeping staunch and shtoom.
In the aftermath, Raylene had written to Antony while he was locked up pledging her undying love, but over time the situation changed. Antony came to believe Raylene had a new man and he took the development calmly and philosophically. Looking out from the wrong side of the bars, Antony probably came to realise that while his marriage to Raylene had been through some rough and interesting patches, all things considered, they probably weren’t, that good for each other. Then something happened that did make Antony angry and turned him against his wife. Detective Sergeant Bailey and his right-hand man Detective Senior Constable Michael Cruse were ready with pens waiting. Antony made a detailed War-and-Peace-length statement to police fully implicating his wife and agreed to give evidence against her. Shayne had also made admissions to his role in the Ballarat and Richmond stings. Raylene turned exceptionally dirty when she discovered hubby was playing ball with the jacks. Her undying love rapidly dried up and she got a divorce, a new boyfriend and a powerful death stare for her ex-husband when they met again in court. Antony pleaded guilty and went to jail pending sentence. Raylene was down for a contested trial before a jury but came to the begrudging conclusion that the rock-solid police brief combined with her better half’s compliance meant she had next to no chance of getting off.
In his rogues’ gallery mugshot taken immediately after his arrest, Antony looked ice-ravaged and drug-weary. His eyes were pin-pricks and he had a wild, overgrown goatee hanging lopsidedly from a worn, life-beaten face that looked twice the age of its owner. Both Szarvaks’ plea hearings were heard together. She came in freely in a business ensemble. He appeared on the screen from prison clean-shaven, looking fresh, fit, bulked up and no longer ice-ravaged. Doing time destroys many crims but for others the routine, discipline and absence of temptation agrees with them. But regardless of how good Antony looked, his fiery former missus who later greased him off in court would not give him so much as a look.
Recriminations …
PROSECUTORS emphasised the callous disregard the betrothed bandits had shown for their victims. Patrons and staff were left fearing for their lives as the pair cut a destructive path that would have escalated with an ever-growing pool of victims had police not caught them. The pair had been willing to use their gun to blow out windows and doors to escape if they got locked in during a robbery. Sometimes they would do their robberies with the gun half-cocked. The slightest stumble or nervous twitch could have seen a cashier or patron get their head blown off. So the court fight was not about whether they had done the crimes or whether they were serious offences, but whether Antony or Raylene was the criminal ringleader and who should get the bigger sentence.
Raylene’s lawyer said she had suffered a ‘destructive and domineering’ relationship with Antony and argued that Antony had suggested the crimes and put pressure on her to carry them out. Her husband was a ‘toxic drug-addicted psychotic’ and the only man she had really ever known in her life. Raylene testified she had taken drugs to escape ‘a life of shame’ having let her parents down. Armed robberies didn’t give her a thrill, she claimed, they left her sleepless and physically sick.
The presiding judge struggled to see towering Raylene as a wilting violet. Her aggression during the robberies and love letters to her jailed hubby seemed to contradict her dominated victim act. The judge labelled Raylene a ‘most unimpressive witness’ who had tailored her evidence to garner victim status. He also seemed to believe Raylene had duped a psychologist who had helpfully formed the professional opinion that Raylene was depressed due to years of abuse. Raylene’s lawyer fell back on the velocity of the illegal transactions. ‘At least it was quick … in and out,’ the lawyer said. He was not wrong. When they had been on the tear, the Szarvaks had struck venues like lightning. They had a personal aim to get into a venue, get out and then get away in less than sixty seconds. In any of those sixty seconds they could have been gunned down by a security guard or a cop, or knocked out or shot with their own weapon by a have-a-go hero working the one-armed bandits. They could have both been killed on a job and wondered in their last seconds what would happen to their orphaned kids. But none of that had happened. Instead, though drug-addled, they had grown confident and they had warmed to their roles. Raylene seemed to love barging in and shouting lines like: ‘I’ve got a gun. Give me all the money or I’ll shoot. This is not a joke!’.
They had zigzagged around Melbourne’s western suburbs on their terrifying spree waving a carbine firearm not dissimilar to the gun favoured by an earlier notorious Australian robber—Ned Kelly. They had balanced a few other risk factors either out of necessity or for an extra thrill. Raylene would barge into venues that had armed guards, shouting demands and acting as if she was armed while actually weaponless. Ice-mad Antony would sling Rosie around half-cocked. And if all that wasn’t risky enough, their getaway vehicle had glow-plug issues that made the car hard to start. It was a bizarre double life where in the early morning aftermath of a robbery the married couple would come home, Rosie would be thrown in her safe, the wads of cash would be stashed away, there would be a meagre few hours’ sleep and then back to the regular hum of the kids’ school runs, trips to the shops and repetitive domestic chores. Ultimately the larcenous lovers ended up a world away from where they started—the young sweethearts had turned into boring marrieds and then ice-junkies, dangerous bandits, divorcees, then jailbirds.
The pair went down for nearly all their crimes. They were not prosecuted over the Cellarbrations liquor store in Delahey, the Deer Park Post Office or the Kings Road Liquor store in St Albans, or the initial attempt at the Bakers Arms all because of the poor quality of CCTV footage (though it is understood these incidents are not contested by the convicted pair). Antony was sentenced to seven years with a five-year minimum. Raylene, who took longer to fess up and feign remorse, copped eleven years inside—not to be released before eight years were up. The disparity in Antony and Raylene’s his ‘n’ her jail terms no doubt reflected his willingness, and her reluctance, to admit wrongdoing. In a way they were both lucky—a single armed robbery charge can attract a twenty-five-year sentence. But it seems the judge also reached the conclusion that it was the Bonnie of the Bacchus Marsh partnership, not the Clyde, who was the driving force. With both parents in the big house the four Szarvak tots were moved to the care of relatives.
All in all it was a pretty good result for police and prosecutors—one that would have been much harder, or maybe impossible, to achieve if the Bonnie and Clyde pair had both said nothing and put the authorities to their proof. So what exactly was it that made the new-improved clean-cut jailbird Antony turn on his ex-wife and give police evidence against her when he had been so placid about her new man and the bust-up of their marriage? Sometimes fate turns on the head of a pin and it’s the little things that determine the big outcomes.
After their arrests Antony was locked up and bored with little from the outside world for stimulation or comfort. He waited as 25 December came and went with mounting disbelief. Eventually he could deny the obvious no more—Raylene had neglected to send the poor banged-up bastard a Christmas card. As far as he was concerned, that was just beyond the pale.
* Author’s note: Antony spelt his name Szarvak. Raylene preferred to drop the ‘z’ in her own use of the surname but they have been kept in the uniform style of the former here for ease of reference, particularly with the plural.