‘For all the police knew, Bobby was attacked by the Phantom of the Opera’
IN the summer of 1974, Victorians were shaken out of their holiday mood by the news that a married Salvation Army couple had been senselessly murdered on a lonely road near Berwick.
The couple, Colonel Ronald Walter Smith, 65, and Minna Radcliffe Smith, 67, were on their way to take a gift of plums to relatives on January 17, when they were killed.
Colonel Smith had been shot in the head and chest, and his wife in the head, chest and shoulder.
Police believed the killer ordered the couple from their small 1968 white Mazda sedan, then executed them. He then tried to steal the car, but bogged it in soft ground caused by heavy summer rains. He was forced to abandon the car and flee. The dead man’s body was found under the right rear wheel of the car, the woman’s about two metres away. Police believe she was shot as she tried to run away after her husband was killed. Robert James Barron, then 25, was charged with the murders.
It was alleged Barron flagged the car down in Darling Road, East Malvern, after a drinking session with a mate in a local hotel and ordered the couple to drive to a St Kilda flat, and later to Berwick.
A key Crown witness, Kevin Marsden, told the court that Barron later told him: ‘I knocked them both. I must have been mad. I run them both over.’
Another witness told of finding the bodies. ‘I saw the body of a male near the rear wheel of the car. His body had tyre marks on the body.’
After a six-day trial during which the defence did not offer evidence and Barron did not make a statement, he was found guilty.
At one stage he sacked his lawyer; he also yelled abuse at a witness. At the inquest he had to be removed from the court.
Before sentence Mr Justice Gillard said that he usually did not comment about a jury decision and only handed down the penalty.
‘However, having regard to the evidence of this case, I must say I agree with the verdict of the jury. These were atrocious crimes with no redeeming feature, and it is very difficult to understand why anybody should have been guilty of such callousness and shocking conduct.’
It took the jury of seven women and five men just 75 minutes to reach the unanimous verdict of guilty.
As soon as the foreman declared the verdict, Barron cried out, ‘you have just found an innocent man guilty. You’re all murderers. How does it feel to be a murderer.’
One woman in tears at the back of the court yelled out; ‘you bastards, what’s he going to be like as an old man?’
Asked if he had anything to say before sentencing Barron said: ‘There’s no justice.’ He then turned to a group of detectives who had given evidence against him and said: ‘What about you, you bastards. You got Ryan hanged on hearsay, and now me.’
Barron was one of the last men in Victoria sentenced to death. The penalty was later commuted to life in prison. In 1976 he was sentenced to four months after he escaped from Pentridge Prison. He scaled the south wall of the jail but was recaptured within minutes.
The then head of the homicide squad, Mr Bill Walters, said he remembered Barron well. ‘He was a violent criminal of his time who showed no remorse for what he had done. He was a person without compassion, or any redeeming features whatsoever.’
In 1992 he was still in custody and was considered insane.
THERE was a young chappie out at Pentridge Prison many years ago who was popular with most other crims, yet feared by them at the same time. As I was to find so often, I held a somewhat different view of the gentleman.
His name is Bobby Barron. He was the bloke who murdered two Salvation Army officers in the early 1970s when he wanted to steal their car — a bit much for a car, even for a bloke with my sensitive ways.
The Salvo husband and wife team gave him a lift when he was hitch-hiking and he repaid them by killing them in cold blood. Then he put their bodies under the back wheels of the car to try and get out of the bog.
Now I’ve always liked Salvos. I’d always buy a Watchtower when a Salvo came through the pub. Ask anyone, I’ve always been a bit of a softie. There was a wonderful fellow, a Salvo, who used to visit H Division to ask prisoners if they needed Christmas gifts to send to their children. This was the sort of Christian thing the Salvos would do, that the other religious types failed to bother with.
The Salvos would do things without any fuss or fanfare. I would watch with an eagle eye as a stream of so-called top gangsters and armed robbery men, some who would talk about the money they made in six figure numbers, would tell their sob stories to the Salvo to get presents for their kids. It was pathetic to watch and see the big-talking gangsters take advantage of Christian charity. It was something I always remembered. They would rather spend their own money in jail on drugs and get the Salvos to provide the presents for the kids.
Barron was once a top streetfighter and an up and coming gunman, well connected with certain members of the underworld. But it is my expert opinion that the use of the drug LSD in the early 1970s sent him into a world of insanity from which he never returned.
I was with Bobby in B Division in 1975. He was then considered to be the fittest man in Pentridge. He was also as mad as a cut snake and had wild and crazy eyes. He refused to speak to anyone, which was fairly handy, because when he did he just didn’t make sense. Other inmates were always a little on edge when he was around. He gave people the creeps. He was a spooky bastard.
Bobby and I met up again in H Division in 1976, after he escaped and was on the outside for all of about 20 seconds. Let me tell you, freedom did not help his equilibrium in the brain box department, if you get my meaning.
He walked around the Number Two Industry Yard of H Division with a razor blade in his pocket, and he was no apprentice barber, let me tell you. He would spend his days staring at me and Jimmy Loughnan. I was always taught that staring at someone was the height of bad manners, particularly if you carried a razor blade and carried on like an extra from The Exorcist.
So it was that Bobby Barron was carried out out of the Number Two industry yard with his skull shattered in a dozen places with chips of skull bone, hair, skin and flesh splattered around the place.
Not a pretty sight. Particularly before dinner. From memory, it was steak-and-kidney pudding that night.
We all thought he would die, but he didn’t. For some stupid reason the police interviewed Jimmy Loughnan and myself over poor Bobby’s mishap. I told the police that I thought they were jumping to conclusions and had ignored the obvious — the attempted suicide angle of the case.
He may have been mad but Bobby Barron was a solid hard crim and he didn’t give anyone up, and whoever did it was never brought to justice. No-one in the Industry Yard saw anything … Danny James was taking a piss, Johnny Price was washing his hands, Jimmy Loughnan was watching a bullant crawling up the wall and I was watching Jimmy Loughnan while he was watching the bullant. Sadly, none of us could help the police on this occasion, much as we would have liked.
For all the police knew, Bobby was attacked by the Phantom of the Opera. Allegations that Jimmy Loughnan pulled Bobby’s coat while I caved his head in with a vice handle are, to repeat an often-used expression, foul gossip and slander.
The last I heard Bobby Barron was residing in J Ward at the Ararat Mental Hospital for the criminally insane. He may never again see the light of day. Years after the incident I met him in Jika Jika. I gave him a TV and a radio. He was like a small child in the mind.
Bobby thought he remembered what had happened in H Division. He told me he had been attacked by some bad fairies. He was totally gone … maybe he should have run for Parliament.
ALEX THE ARAB
Alex the Arab was a hard old boy,
He had a plan, he had a ploy,
He fought Frankie first, and then he fought me,
Then out came the blade, and the Arab began to flee,
I went and got my mate Max,
A home made, razor sharp, steel meat axe,
Alex didn’t even know it was coming,
Twice in the brain, and I kept on running,
He didn’t squeal, cry or squawk,
Bang in the head, with the old tomahawk.
Ha ha.
