Chapter 6

Petersen MP Goes to Jail

ON SUNDAY 28 May, Duncan Robb, an old friend of Ollard and Fitch’s who took supplies of heroin from Clark through Wilson to feed his own addiction and – to make enough money to pay for it – dealt on a small scale, arrived back at Kingsford-Smith airport in Sydney. He was travelling from Auckland under a false passport carrying the name Andrews. He was directed, randomly, to the search lane in the customs hall and, as the officer went to open his case, Robb admitted to having a replica of a .38 pistol fitted to fire .22 bullets, quite a lethal weapon in anyone’s hands. It had been a reasonable gamble – passengers from New Zealand are rarely searched – but that Sunday Robb’s luck ran out. Taken to the interview room and asked for further identification, Robb pulled out his driving licence, which happened to be carrying his real name – Robb. The customs men became even more interested and decided to search his flat. They took Robb first to his former address, but Robb’s key didn’t fit the door. He then backed down and took them to his right address in Raglan Street Mosman, near Shrimpton’s flat. The customs searchers found half a 10 g heroin pack in Robb’s flat. They took him back and proceeded to sweat him. The process was helped by the fact that Robb’s last shot of heroin had been the night before.

Robb had been part of the original group around Ollard, his closest friend being Mark Fitt, one of those killed in the triple road accident in the previous July. Although Robb took such a small supply, he was kept on the books presumably because of the old Ollard link, perhaps even to ensure that he didn’t ask too many questions about where Ollard and Theilman had gone. Wilson had been handling Robb and in the previous two months had passed on ten 10 g bags of heroin. They used to meet in a hotel, The Oaks at Neutral Bay, safe amid its clientele of real estate agents and trendy executives. But Robb, with his association with Ollard and Fitt, knew all the names. The night after his arrest he had named Clark, Ollard and Shrimpton for the narcotics officer, Graham Brindle. The next day he repeated those names and 11 more to Brindle’s superior, narcotics officer Richard Spencer. Just as importantly he gave details of phone codes used by the Organisation, the keys to the numbers in his book which had been confiscated. Brindle proposed a deal. The charge against Robb for the 5 g of heroin could be broken down to ‘possession’ instead of dealing if he helped to set up Clark. After being remanded on the pistol charge, Robb obligingly rang Clark at Wahroonga, but of course Clark had moved out after Lewis’ arrest. Brindle kept up his pressure throughout the week, coming around again to Robb’s flat on Thursday and Friday.

Clark was now hiding out in a new flat with Allison at Manly. To draw her further into the Organisation he took her to Brisbane to introduce her to his friends there. For the first time she met there Andy Maher who had just couriered in a load of heroin. Clark and Allison watched Maher going through the airport customs, once again helped by the corrupt officer’s information. They followed him in a cab back to the Crest Hotel where they linked up. It was a two-suitcase load – 15 kg – A$1.5 million or so clear profit. That was the day of Robb’s arrest. On his return the next day Clark, according to Allison later, made a call from Sydney airport to check what his Narcotics Bureau contacts were on to and then learned of Robb’s arrest. Clark drove into town to hand over A$10,000, a payment for any further information.

Douglas Wilson described what happened next in his interview only two weeks later with the police and a Narcotics Bureau man in Brisbane: ‘[This] guy top of the customs in Sydney. He actually met Terry, played him the tape of the conversation [with Robb]’. This allegation was to assume importance in a court case a year later. Whatever the truth of that, on Friday 1 June, three men came to Robb’s flat and took him for a ride. They were Clark, Maher and another New Zealander, Patrick Bennett, who ran messages as well as dealing from time to time for the Organisation.

They drove north from Manly through Mona Vale and turned west into Frenchs Forest until they reached a suitable turnoff into the bush. In the car Clark launched a verbal tirade. Afterwards Robb remembered two key facts. The first was the general boast about the narcotics agency: ‘I’ve a little bird in the office tells me what’s going on’. The second was an important point of detail: that Clark knew that Robb had handed over the phone code. When they got out Robb knew what was coming and asked to urinate first to make sure he didn’t lose control during the bashing. Clark agreed and then moved slowly and methodically. He hit Robb, bashing him first around the legs, knocking him over. As Robb hunched his arms around his head Clark hit him 10 or 12 times, breaking Robb’s arm and a number of his fingers. Clark and his companions left, telling Robb not to move for 10 minutes, because otherwise he would be shot.

Robb then staggered to the road and finally succeeded in getting a lift to hospital. He did not call the police. Under police interrogation in England the next year, Clark was quite clear in his recollection of the event, even with some characteristic exaggeration: ‘That shit. I did him myself. I made an example of him. He grassed so I did him over with a baseball bat. I started at his fingers, broke every bone up to his neck and then started at his toes and worked up. I left his face alone. I wanted him to live, just for an example’. Maher and Clark then went back to the new Manly flat where they were working on breaking up Maher’s shipment of heroin for transfer to Peter Fulcher, a friend of Clark’s, in New Zealand. Later that night Clark began to wonder what had happened to Robb so he, Maher and Allison went back to the Forest, but there was no sign of Robb.

Robb went back to the people he’d spoken to in the Bureau and told them of the beating. Robb’s solicitor was suggested as the likely informant but Robb knew that whatever he had said to the solicitor, no phone codes had ever been mentioned. However, he’d learned his lesson for the present and did nothing more about setting up Clark.

But even if the Robb threat had been neutralised, Clark still brooded about it. On the following night, he took the baseball bat and knife to where Robb’s car, a Mini Cooper, was parked outside his flat. Clark slashed the upholstery apart and then smashed every window and dinted the body work so badly that it could not be repaired. A few days later, a public spirited citizen reported the state of the car and a NSW police constable traced the registration and went to interview the owner, only to find that Mr Robb wanted no action taken. It was, to put it mildly, a pretty cheeky challenge to the Narcotics Bureau and a lesson to any other potential informer not to run to the Bureau.

The fact that Allison’s flat was used to break up the compressed heroin shows just how far she’d been brought into the Organisation. She had already done two money courier jobs to Singapore and was shortly to undertake a heroin delivery to New Zealand, with twenty-five 10 g-bags strapped around her waist. Peter Fulcher, who was building up a market of his own, had been hitherto using his own girls, but for this run Allison was paid A$1,000. She brought back NZ$25,000 in notes as payment to the Organisation. Meanwhile Allison’s recruited friend, Kay, had set out on her first trip. Plans were well advanced for two more girl courier flights into Australia that month under Allison’s supervision.

Clark was breathing more easily again. The Lewis threat had been eliminated, the Robb threat averted with a little help from friends, and there remained only the Wilsons.

They had gone into hospital on 26 May to dry out. On the weekend after the beating-up of Robb, Clark went out to see them. While he knew that the house at Killara had been identified through the cracking of the phone code, Clark equally knew that the Bureau’s surveillance would only be random, and in any case Monday was a public holiday. So on that Monday he coaxed the Wilsons out for a few hours to pick up their possessions from Killara. Earlier Clark had installed their dog sitter, a New Zealand girl, in the safety of a large American-style motel, the Ramada Inn at Crows Nest. On the Tuesday the Wilsons booked themselves out of the hospital and signed in at the Ramada under the name of Lawrence. The Wilsons were reluctant to flee Sydney breaking the lease on their Killara house. The penalty for breaking their lease had been high; it was typical of their scattiness that they rented a four-bedroom house in Killara, usually rated in the top three suburbs, to accommodate the two of them and a dog.

The next day Clark put Wilson back to work, employing him to drop A$12,000 in cash at Cross and Mercers at Brookvale for transmission to Singapore. But Clark had other plans and he kindly suggested that the Wilsons should come up to Brisbane and take a few days’ holiday in the sun. The Wilsons were more than receptive, since Isabel’s parents were due in Brisbane shortly, where they planned to settle down after her father had finished an expatriate contract in New Guinea.

So next day, Thursday, the Wilsons, with their dog, drove north. They stayed in a Brisbane motel that night and then rang the Organisation’s contact for Clark’s address. After some delays a boat trip was arranged for either that day, or Saturday or Sunday. On the previous weekend, when he’d called on the Wilsons at the hospital, Clark had spoken of a new boat in Brisbane, ‘68 foot with a four thousand mile cruising range’. That Friday morning in Brisbane Clark was cheerful about the cruise. As Wilson said later, ‘He asked me about the dog, he said, “Is he going to be seasick?” I said “Come on man, he’s a Dutch barge dog. How the hell’s he going to get seasick with me?” He said “Does he freak out on guns going off?” and I said “No he shouldn’t do”.’ Perhaps it was a macabre example of Clark’s sense of humour but it certainly fed the Wilsons’ paranoia. The boat trip looked like being a big reunion: the Brisbane man Ian Henry was going out, together with Jimmy Shepherd and Stephen Muhary. Whether the plan was to kill the Wilsons or just to give them a convalescent cruise will never be clear for that morning Clark was about to pay the price for that sense of humour.

When Clark had booked into the Gazebo Motel in Brisbane he had trifled with a name it was unwise to play with in Queensland: he had signed the register ‘Petersen M.P.’. The Premier of Queensland, a Hughie Long type Country Party demagogue, is Joh Bjelke-Petersen, M.P. Somebody in the Gazebo management felt that a man who signed that name might be mocking their state’s leader or, worse, might even be a confidence trickster of some kind. So the Consorting Squad detectives came around for a visit. Searching the room, they found sufficient evidence, including $5,276 in notes, to convince them they weren’t dealing with some minor criminal and when they went downstairs to the Jaguar they found a magnum – in fact the very gun that had killed Harry Lewis. When Ian Henry and Jimmy Shepherd rang in, they were netted by the police, and when the Wilsons phoned to finalise their boat tour arrangements, the call was traced and two Consorting Squad detectives arrested them. The Organisation was in trouble.

That night, two undercover policemen were put in the big cell containing Clark and Shepherd. Talking with Shepherd, Clark toyed with the idea of taking the rap not only for the magnum but also for another gun found at Ian Henry’s garage. Shepherd then told Clark how he had told the police that he was in Brisbane on a punting trip betting on the horses. That out of the way they settled down to the business of the Organisation. Shepherd explained he would skip bail in the morning and said to Clark, ‘Now that you’re going away for a while I suppose I’ll have to take the reins.’ Clark told Shepherd to contact Maria and to find Stephen Muhary, who knew the stashes in Frenchs Forest. The two police officers strained to hear about three million in gear in the stashes [dollars-worth of hidden drugs]. There was talk about what a ‘bitch’ the woman [Valerie Kairua] in New Zealand was, and Shepherd suggested an expenditure of A$20,000 to bribe her. All in all, it was an interesting conversation to the listeners and a dangerously careless one for Shepherd, Clark and the Organisation. Next morning Shepherd pleaded guilty to being in possession of money suspected of being unlawfully obtained and was bailed. He flew to Sydney under the surveillance of a Queensland detective.