‘The guy was a mental peanut with the physical courage of dishwater’
HE was feared in the NSW and Victorian underworld for more than a decade. A good looking man with a cruel streak who would kill anyone if the price was right.
Christopher Dale Flannery, known to one and all as ‘Rentakill’, relished a reputation he earned after beating two separate murder charges.
Born in Brunswick in 1949, Flannery left school at 14. Ironically, his brother Ed chose the high road and ended up a successful barrister.
Chris, on the other hand, was a likeable young man until he was placed under pressure. Then he would respond with extreme violence. As a teenager he was sentenced to seven years for rape.
By the 1970s Flannery started to turn his naturally violent nature into profit. He taught himself the rudimentary elements of pathology — not to heal, but to hurt. He wanted to know exactly what bullets of different calibres would do when they entered the human body, and his interest wasn’t academic.
Once, when Flannery was arrested at Geelong, he said he was sick and was taken to the toilet. He grabbed a small pistol from his underpants — but was overpowered by police.
He was not a subtle man. As with most criminals, Flannery had his fair share of tattoos, including one across his stomach, the word ‘Lunchtime’, with an arrow pointing to his groin.
For some time Flannery was close to the one-legged private investigator, Tom Ericksen, a notorious figure in his own right.
In 1980 Flannery was charged with the murder of Melbourne businessman, Roger Wilson.
In what was, to then, the longest murder trial in Victoria’s history, it was alleged that Flannery and another man were paid $35,000 to kill Wilson. The Crown stated that the hitmen pretended to be detectives and flagged down Wilson’s green Porsche on the Princess Highway at Cranbourne.
The unsuspecting businessman was handcuffed and taken to a lonely spot to be killed. According to police the first shot failed to kill Wilson, who then made a desperate break in the darkness.
He then ran blindly until he hit a paddock fence where Flannery fired several shots into the body. Wilson’s body has never been found.
The Crown alleged that Flannery drove Wilson’s car to Tullamarine where he left it in the long-term car park to give the impression that Wilson had voluntarily staged his own disappearance.
Police were told that Flannery was berated by a woman for being ‘sloppy’ in the way he had killed Wilson.
A teenage girl, Debbie Boundy, was to have been a key witness in the trial. She disappeared in 1981 from the car park of a Melbourne hotel. She has not been seen since. It was alleged that she was lured from the pub with the promise of some marijuana, but was abducted and shot in the head.
Flannery was acquitted of the murder but his troubles were far from over. As he walked from the Supreme Court he was charged with the murder of Sydney massage parlor standover man Raymond Francis Locksley. After two trials he was found not guilty in Sydney in 1984. But it was a fateful move for Flannery, who decided to try his luck in Sydney. He was befriended by notorious Sydney crime boss, the so-called ‘colorful racing identity’ George Freeman, who used the imported Melbourne gunman as his personal muscle.
Soon after Flannery arrived in Sydney an underworld war broke out which cost at least eight lives. During this war, Melbourne criminal Alan David Williams was involved with Flannery in the plot to kill Sydney drug squad detective, Michael Drury, who was to give evidence against Williams.
Alan Williams was a major armed robber in Melbourne in the late 1960s but in the 1970s, like many others, he moved into drugs. He began to move vast amounts of amphetamines, marijuana and heroin. At one stage he had dealers working for him in St Kilda, Elwood. Fitzroy, Williamstown, Footscray and Coburg.
‘I was a giant in the trade,’ Williams recalled later. ‘I thought I was invincible and unpinchable.’ At first he was a dealer who didn‘t use. Eventually he began to smoke heroin and then to inject it. He was arrested after a drug deal involving NSW undercover detective, Michael Drury, outside the Old Melbourne Hotel in 1982.
He had been introduced to the undercover man by another figure in the drug world, Brian Carl Hansen.
Desperate to keep out of jail, Williams first tried unsuccessfully to bribe Drury — and then offered $100,000 to have him killed.
On June 6, 1984, Drury was shot as he stood in his Chatswood home. He survived.
Williams’ brother-in-law, Lindsay Simpson, was not so lucky. He was shot dead outside Williams’ home in September, 1984. It was a case of the wrong man. Dennis Bruce Allen, a vicious drug dealer, had ordered that Williams should he murdered. But the criminal he hired for the hit, Ray ‘the Red Rat’ Pollitt, shot Simpson by mistake.
Williams later pleaded guilty to attempting to bribe Drury and conspiracy to murder. He was released in 1992 from Goulburn jail, vowing to give up drugs and crime.
Police subsequently discovered that Flannery had agreed to kill Drury for $100,000. He took a deposit of $50,000 and stalked the policeman to the Chatswood house and shot the policeman as he stood in his kitchen washing dishes.
Drury was shot twice at point blank range, but to the amazement of his colleagues and medical staff, he lived. Flannery told Williams not to bother sending the remaining $50,000 because Drury was not dead, and so the ‘contract’ was not fulfilled.
Flannery, who lived by the sword, was to die by it. It is believed that a group of major criminal figures decided that Flannery was a loose cannon who had to die. He disappeared on May 9, 1985. His body has never been found.
His wife, Kath, who was almost killed in an attempt on her husband, denied that he was a hitman, acknowledging only that he was ‘no sugar plum fairy.’
SO much has been written on Christopher Dale Flannery, ‘Mr Rentakill’, and I don’t want to speak ill of the dead. But really, the guy was a mental peanut with the physical courage of dishwater.
Flannery had an overblown reputation built on about 10 or 12 facts and 1000 fairy tales. In my expert opinion he was so far behind he couldn’t hear the band playing. He hated me, but the hatred was born out of pure fear.
Years ago he barricaded himself in his cell because the screw threatened to move him to cell two, side one, which just happened to be the cell next to mine. He accused the screws of trying to have him killed and demanded to see his lawyer.
The screws were only joking with him, the weak-gutted prick. But I’m glad the fag is dead.
This mental giant employed Amos, ‘the Witchdoctor’ Atkinson, proving the man was a tactical retard. He had a close working relationship with the late ‘Hopalong’ Tom Ericksen. He also worked for the late George Freeman as a strongarm man, debt collector and standover man.
There are many stories about what finally happened to the bag of wind so I will tell you how he left this world. A man I believe and trust but cannot name told me the real story on Flannery.
Tough Tom Domican was the man everyone thought knocked Flannery. It was well known the two of them hated each other, so when poor old Chris went on the missing list half the Sydney underworld were whispering Tommy’s name. Tom loved this. He was delighted to feed the rumors. He was not a man without an ego. In fact, he started to tell certain people that he had done the hit and had disposed of the body. But he confided to a couple of his good friends ‘I’m gonna look a nice stupe if that big prick turns up.’ There was no fear of that because Tommy Domican knew that Flannery was no more. But his big mouth got him in trouble and he ended up doing time over an attempt on Flannery’s life. I won’t comment whether he was guilty of that or not.
Now I will tell you what really happened to Rentakill. He forgot the golden rule: trust no-one, particularly if he is close to you. Flannery was hit from behind with a meat cleaver as he drove a car. The killer was a trusted ally.
I know the name of the man who did it but I will not betray him. The man who put him on the missing list is a Melbourne-based gentleman who has put enough people on the list over the past 20 years to be believed. I would believe him before I would believe anybody in Sydney.
As for Tommy Domican, a stretch in jail should teach the Irish numbskull to keep his mouth shut and stop bragging about things he didn’t do.
Flannery’s body was put through a tree shredder and his minced remains rest in Seymour, Victoria. End of story.
People don’t know it but there is very good mail that it was Flannery who killed Ray Chuck in the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court in 1979. And he would have killed Freeman if that mob hadn’t got him first. Domican was a bit player in a major production. He didn’t have a starring role.
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ALAN David Williams was the man who paid Chris Flannery to put a bullet into the NSW undercover policeman, Mick Drury.
I knew Williams in B Division in 1975. He was a nothing then, and in my opinion has lost ground ever since. He had a running war with Dennis Allen for a while as they blued over who would control drugs in jail. Big deal. But I’ll say one thing, Williams was a cunning bastard, too bloody slippery for my liking. He was more like a fat-arsed used car salesman than a good crook. I disliked him at first sight and he knew it. He was not what I would describe as a brave man. He preferred to employ others to do his dirty work. He employed mental retards and top of the range idiots, mainly.
While it is commonly believed that Williams got Flannery to shoot Drury. I am one of the few who believe that Williams, for some unknown reason, said that to cover up the true facts and to protect a corrupt police officer. He had close links with a network of bent bobbies around the place.
I would believe very little of what came out of the mouth of Williams. He is a game player and a deal maker who operated in a world of shadows, police spies and double agents.
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BRIAN Carl Hansen was a Mr Big in the drug world. He was a friend of Alan David Williams. Hansen was the man who told the undercover NSW drug squad detective, Michael Drury, that if he was a copper that he was a ‘bloody dead man.’
But for all his wealth and alleged underworld power, Brian was a very frightened man. Typical of the modern drug gangster, he was without power once drugs were removed from his hands.
I personally didn’t mind him as I found him no threat at all.
A guy called Tony, who was involved in the Great Bookie Robbery, introduced me to Brian. He was very nice to me … but then again, death is always treated with respect. People like Brian being nice to me was not a sign of friendship, just of fear. Your old granny would get over him in a fight.
I wouldn’t wear any of the bums on a brooch.
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FLANNERY shot and killed five times more men after his death than he ever did when he was alive and well.
In matters relating to who shot who in the drug world, especially where police, honest and otherwise, are concerned, one is left with one question. What is the truth? I personally doubt that the truth has ever been told.
As far as Flannery was concerned it was a case of ‘Rentafool’, not ‘Rentakill.’ But I shouldn’t be so hard on the dead, so here is my personal tribute to the man …
THE BALLAD OF RENTAKILL
Some found him hard and cruel.
Some found him tough and scary.
But to me,
He will always be,
Just another dead sugar plum fairy.
