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The Glenfield Siege

If it hadn’t been so ridiculous it could have been very, very dangerous. It involved a psychopath, a police commissioner, a jail chaplain, a high-powered rifle, a baby and a young mother appropriately named Muddle. And what a muddle it was. The Glenfield Siege will go down in our history as arguably the greatest criminal muddle of all time.

For ten days in the winter of 1968, throughout freezing con-ditions and rain, a lone gunman threatened to kill a hostage and her baby, who he held in a Sydney house, while the Australian public tuned in on television as if they were watching a 7 o’clock soapie. Enterprising locals set up food stalls and sold pies, hot dogs and steaming cups of coffee to the huge crowd of media and curious onlookers who gathered to watch the drama unfold. None were disappointed.

Australia’s most bizarre siege began on the morning of 2 July 1968, when two detectives called on the home of known crim-inal Wally Mellish in Sydney’s outer western suburbs to have a chat with him about a series of car thefts in the district. Twenty-two-year-old Mellish had only been released from prison a few months earlier and had rented the two-bedroom fibro cottage in Glenfield Road where he now lived with his 19-year-old girlfriend, Beryl Muddle, and her 11-week-old son Leslie. In those days Glenfield Road was little more than a bitumen track.

When the detectives informed Mellish of the reason for their visit he began to rant and rave. He flew into a fit of rage and allegedly fired a rifle into the air. What his intentions were was not determined, but the detectives weren’t taking any chances and retreated as fast as they could. The Glenfield Siege had begun.

Not sure what to do, given that there was a woman and a baby inside the house, the police called for reinforcements, but all they could do was watch and wait and hope that the hostages were safe. That is, if they were really hostages at all. With little activity coming from the house it was a stand-off, police fearing for the lives of the woman and her baby should they storm the house. And so, as the media and crowds gathered, the waiting continued.

After a few days Wally Mellish made demands from the window for food or he would shoot Beryl Muddle and the little boy. He made no bones about it: it was now definitely a hostage situation. Police, who had surrounded the house at a safe distance, met his every demand and waited for the right opportunity to arise to storm the house without endangering the woman and her child’s lives. It didn’t come, and the stalemate continued and the crowds grew bigger.

Families from all over Sydney arrived and some pitched tents in the vacant block of land opposite the siege house. They set up barbecues, cooked steaks and sausages and drank beer while they waited for something to happen. The local shops did a roaring trade and the pub never had it so good.

In the meantime, Wally Mellish’s demands were becoming more regular and outrageous. After yelling out that he was ready to kill Beryl and the little boy and then turn the rifle on himself, if he couldn’t negotiate the situation with a high-ranking police officer, the Police Commissioner, Mr Norman Allan, decided it was time to take positive action and find out exactly what it was that Mellish wanted in exchange for his hostages. And Mr Allan would personally take on the role of negotiator. The newspapers declared it a joke.

Mr Allan rang Wally Mellish on at least ten occasions and, through their cosy little chats, determined that things could be resolved in a hurry if the police commissioner would arrange for Wally and Beryl to be married in the house forthwith, with the commissioner acting as Wally’s best man and Detective Superintendent Don Fergusson acting as witness to make the happy occasion legal.

An astonished public, informed up to the minute by the media as to what was going on, cheered uproariously as the Long Bay Jail chaplain, Reverend Clyde Paton, arrived and entered the house to perform the nuptials. Having done that, the now family man Wally reneged on the deal to give himself up and ushered the commissioner, the witness and the chaplain out the door at gunpoint and the siege continued where it had left off.

In a scathing editorial the Daily Telegraph reported: ‘It is difficult to imagine a more complete and hopeless shemozzle than the handling of the Siege of Glenfield. The public must feel completely baffled and so must most of the police force. Bravery and headlines are not a substitute for judgement and clear thinking.’

The following day Mellish yelled out that he had the rifle against his wife’s head and unless they gave him a machine gun he would blow hers and then the baby’s brains out. The ever obliging commissioner explained to Wally that he didn’t have a machine gun handy but he would provide him with the next best thing, the deadliest police weapon of the day, an armour-piercing Armalite rifle. Mr Allan personally delivered it to the front door. Not only did the commissioner come under attack from the press; his own men, who were in the firing line should Mellish decide to go out in a hail of bullets, were openly vocal about the decision to give him the rifle.

The verbal and telephone negotiations continued through the night and finally, on the 10th day, weak from lack of sleep and with the promise from the commissioner that he would allow him to attempt to join the army should he surrender, Wally Mellish gave up without so much as a whimper. His wife and stepson were unharmed. It was later revealed that before it was given to Mellish the Armalite rifle had been rendered safe by a weapons expert.

True to his word, Commissioner Allan carried out his promise of helping Mellish join the army. Of course, given the nature of his recent activities, it was ridiculous and the army rejected it out of hand. Instead Wally Mellish went to jail for a long time, his marriage was annulled on the grounds that it wasn’t legal and, despite a terrible caning from the press, Police Commissioner Allan, along with Reverend Paton, was decorated for bravery.