by Gary Jubelin
The politician called back later, drunk, apologising in case I misunderstood what he was asking. The Thai police put the kid’s father on a plane and we arrested him when it landed.
* * *
Later that year, another father abducted his children after stabbing their mother, although she survived. We worked all night, putting out an Amber Alert broadcast across the news networks to say the kids were missing, and dealing with the phone companies, trying to triangulate his mobile phone signal to work out where he’d taken them.
We kept trying to call him but the phone was switched off.
Just give it one more go, I thought, dialling the number again. The father answered. He sounded reasonable but wouldn’t tell me where they were and, as we spoke, he started getting agitated.
I tried to talk him down. ‘Look, it might seem bad now but it’s not bad. The main thing is your kids.’
‘No, I’m going to go,’ he said, hanging up. I stared at the phone, consumed with panic, and dialled the number again. No answer. I dialled again. He answered.
‘Are the kids OK?’
‘Yes.’ I felt relief wash over me.
We got those children back as well. This time, I kept the father on the phone. We traced the signal, and I also managed to get enough details about exactly where he was for a tactical team to storm their motel room while I was talking to him.
* * *
Around midday on Thursday 24 March 2005, a woman called Natasha Ljubic comes to the front desk of Chatswood Police Station, saying her husband, Bob, has disappeared. She says the 44-year-old deals in luxury cars, and runs two dealerships, Mosman Automobiles and Sydney’s American Imports. He got a call at 9pm last night from someone asking him to go and look at a damaged red Ferrari F355 Spider. He didn’t come home.
I recognise the name: Bob Ljubic was someone we looked at in the last on-call murder I dealt with at Homicide. A former employee of his, Franco Mayer, was shot dead days before being due to appear in the New South Wales Industrial Relations Commission to pursue a $650,000 claim against Bob over alleged loans and unpaid wages. The case was unresolved, but I remember that we’d looked at him as a potential suspect.
It’s interesting but I’ve got a holiday booked with Pam, the first trip we’ll have had overseas without having to escort a prisoner. Just like our Paris trip, we’ve used these deportation flights to visit Fiji and Hong Kong together, but only for a few days. This time, we’re going to Vietnam for a fortnight.
The plan is to escape the intensity of work and home life where, being both cops, work tends to follow us. This time we can relax and enjoy each other. We’ll visit Saigon, Hanoi and go trekking in the mountains. I love the different Asian cultures and, given Pam loves France, I’ve sold her on the history of French colonisation, saying we’ll still be able to find her a baguette.
Two plain clothes constables have been dealing with Natasha and I tell them the disappearance should be reported to State Crime Command. Given Bob’s possible link to the Mayer killing, Homicide should deal with it, I tell them.
Two weeks later, when Pam and I return, I get an update from the constables, Ben Walsh and Andrew Brennan. They’re both good, keen young cops but say that Homicide worked on the case for only four days before handing the case back, effectively leaving them in charge. Despite this, between them they’ve made real progress.
The call Bob received at 9pm on 23 March was traced to a prepaid SIM card, registered to a false name and address. The car he was driving that night was found at The Gap – by chance, the same suicide spot where the body of Caroline Byrne was discovered a decade ago. The car had unknown fingerprints inside it.
Bob’s body was discovered on 28 March floating a kilometre out to sea, wearing only his shoes and socks. A large shark was spotted circling nearby. We were lucky. Much longer and we might never have found him.
Ben and Andrew say that Homicide reckon it was a suicide.
‘That’s not a suicide,’ I say. ‘I’ll make some calls.’
I call Paul, the new Homicide commander, who has replaced Nick Kaldas, and tell him they’ve got it wrong. Paul’s response is flat and unmoving. ‘We’ve assessed it and our assessment is it’s a suicide,’ he says. I tell him, ‘All right, Paul, then just so you know I’m not going behind your back, I’m going to go above you.’
My next call is to his boss at State Crime Command who says, ‘Gary, it’s not a murder, and even if it is, you’re not gonna be able to solve it.’
‘Fuck it, OK, thank you,’ I say.
I know it’s going to enrage them, but I’m not comfortable with writing this one off as a suicide.
I pull in Ben and Andrew, as well as some other detectives and plain clothes constables from different local area commands, telling them: ‘Guys, we’re going to treat this as a murder because it is a murder, and we’re going to solve this because State Crime has told me we’re not going to be able to.’
I get the plain clothes guys to wear dark suits when they turn up at people’s doors, to say they’re working a homicide and never smile. It’ll help reassure any potential witnesses, but it’s also a threat. It’s saying we’re serious about this case and will hopefully get back to those who are responsible. We need a break, and I want those crooks to make mistakes. I want them to panic, thinking, Fuck, these guys are coming after me.
We open up Bob’s life: his medical history and business dealings, including his assets, property interests, loans, debts and transactions. We plan physical surveillance as well as listening devices and telephone intercepts. We discover that Bob knew some interesting people: a SIM card found in his abandoned car is registered to a suspected drug importer, and a street directory on the front seat contains the name and contact details of a member of the Comancheros bikie gang who has a murder conviction. We speak to one informer who tells us Bob was involved with people who ran a cocaine importation racket. Other bikies turn up at Bob’s funeral, including the National Sergeant at Arms of the Rebels.
So, maybe Bob was not an innocent. But, like Terry Falconer, he was still someone’s son. He was still someone’s husband. He’s still somebody’s father.
I like the energy of this strike force. The young guys, particularly Ben and Andrew, drive the investigation forward and we do get our break. Road toll records show us that on the night Bob went missing, his car crossed the Harbour Bridge just ahead of another car driven by a man called Jason McCall. We follow this up and discover McCall is a bear of a man, who once worked in security, and receives $500 a fortnight in unemployment benefits yet shells out $2100 a month in mortgage repayments. He reported his car as having been broken into on the same evening as Bob’s disappearance.
Once again, I ask the New South Wales Crime Commission for help and they start tracing the spider’s web of phone contacts between McCall and others. We learn some of these people don’t seem to get along – the house of one is destroyed in an arson attack and we suspect another might have been the one to do it.
Ben and Andrew argue the arsonist might have stopped for fuel on the long drive to Goulburn, where the attack took place, asking if they can visit every service station in the almost 200 kiolmetres between the city and Sydney for CCTV footage. I like their ambition so say to go for it, though when they return with a pile of tapes, I reckon we’re long odds of finding anything.
‘Mate, this is a needle in a haystack,’ I tell Ben.
‘Oh no, boss, I’ll do it.’ He’s keen.
I’m wrong to doubt them. On the first tape, they find a man who went into the servo to buy a jerrycan of fuel and a lighter. The CCTV camera catches his rego plate, so we get a name, Tom McCartney (not his real name) and pull him into the Crime Commission for questioning. They lay out the evidence against him and, unlike with us, it is a crime not to answer their questions. The flip-side of these powers is that the answers can’t be used in any criminal trial, but that doesn’t stop us using them as intelligence.
I hope the examinati
on will shake Tom and, after, I take him to a separate room and offer him a deal; I say we know what he was up to, but will offer him immunity from prosecution if he chooses to cooperate.
It’s exactly the same tactic the royal commission used to hook their main informer, Trevor Haken. Tom lays it out. He didn’t only do the arson. He was there when McCall and another man kidnapped Bob. They beat him up, blindfolded him and drove him to The Gap, where they marched him up the steps towards the cliff edge. The plan, Tom says, was just to scare him – they wanted money off him, while he and Bob had had some kind of argument in the past – but McCall lost it when they got there, and threw their victim over the fence.
For me, it isn’t a decision. Tom is a crook, no doubt. He was involved and his own account puts him at the scene of Bob’s murder. But, as it stands, we don’t have enough without his evidence to charge anyone. That means that we won’t solve this case without Tom’s help and the price of his cooperation is that he doesn’t face criminal charges.
More than that, we will have to protect him, give him a new name, move him away from Sydney and help find him work. For McCall to go down, Tom must get a new life. I make the call. We’ll sink McCall and give Tom a life raft. That’s what I mean when I say police work is life and death. That’s why I take this job so seriously.
McCall’s no mastermind. Searching his home, we find records linking him to the burner phone used to call Bob and lure him from his home that evening. Tracing the movements of this phone and others he used, we find that they match Bob’s own movements.
Whether he realises we are getting closer, in July 2005, four months after Bob went missing, McCall gets his car professionally cleaned twice in a week. The first time, we have an undercover cop do the work and search it. The second we seize it. There’s nothing there, except some rope, but we’re still satisfied we have enough on the car’s owner now and can afford to change our focus.
I’m interested in the third man Tom said was involved. Tom said his job was to drive Bob’s car out to The Gap after the others kidnapped him. I ask Tom to wear a wire and he arranges a meeting in a club not far from Chatswood Police Station.
It’s high-risk stuff. Unlike with Rocco or Axeman, where we had a cover story that allowed them to go back more than once to try to get more details, I reckon Tom’s got one chance at this before he risks raising suspicion. Our technical guys don’t share my sense of urgency, however. When the day comes they seem more interested in reading the papers and mucking around than checking their equipment.
When Tom gets back, he tells me he got everything we wanted. The two of them discussed the kidnapping. The third man talked about how he drove the Porsche Cayenne four-wheel drive that Bob was driving and dumped it at The Gap. I’m satisfied. If we can get two convictions over this, then allowing Tom to walk away without arrest was worth it.
Driving home, one of the technical guys calls me, saying the recording equipment failed.
I tense up, gripping the steering wheel. ‘What are you saying?’
He plays it down. ‘Look, whenever you want to send him in again, we’ll be there. And we’ll make sure it’s right.’
I snap. ‘Are you fucking for real? You’re telling me to send him in again? Send someone in to talk about a murder again and just repeat the whole thing? You’re telling me that this whole fucking thing has been a waste of time?’
The anger’s natural enough but misdirected. I’m really angry at myself. It is my job. I should have got them to check their equipment.
We never do arrest the third man. I’m sick at the fact that, after all the work, and the big calls, part of this case will fall down over something so stupid. Particularly after the equipment problems with Rocco, it’s also sickening to think that someone might get away with murder just because we don’t have good enough technology.
Still, we do have one good informer and I’m determined to make the most of him. I remember how vulnerable we felt in the police during the royal commission, when their investigation seemed to be unstoppable. It felt like they were talking to everyone, which made you look at even your old friends with suspicion. Over the next few weeks, we plan to do the same thing when we arrest McCall, by using a show of force to simultaneously interview every close relative, business associate or crook we know he deals with.
For each of them, we prepare separate interview plans. We get warrants to search their properties. The whole thing will take between 30 and 40 cops, working together, as each of these different interviews is to take place at the same time. Not every person that we speak to is a suspect, but each of them, we will tell about the others. I want them to feel that same suspicion of their friends and what they might be saying. I want them to think, Do I need to tell the cops something first, just to protect myself?’
On Monday 8 August 2005, we launch these coordinated raids. We call it Operation Day.
McCall denies everything in court. It takes another two years to advance through the rounds of preparatory court hearings and other legal processes but eventually, the jury go against him. In November 2007, McCall gets 29 years and four months for Bob Ljubic’s murder, with a non-parole period of 22 years. It is a victory for Bob’s family, but I’m left with the knowledge that it isn’t perfect. I never did find out who murdered Franco Mayer. Out of the three men who were involved in Bob’s kidnapping, only one – McCall – went down. Tom got immunity from prosecution over his role in the plot, as well as the arson. The third man, who the wire failed to record and who drove Bob’s car to The Gap, was never caught.
We got one man. A life for a life. In that sense, we avenged Bob’s death.
‘I’ll fucking get you, you cunt!’ McCall shouts at me as he’s led away.
* * *
Sometimes, cases make you ask yourself too many questions. At other times, they’re simple. On 4 July 2005, a month before McCall’s arrest, Jeffrey Hillsley was sentenced to 30 years’ jail, with a non-parole period of 25 years, for the murder of Michael Davies and sexual assault of his 10-year-old stepdaughter. We challenge the sentence in the appeal court, and on 28 September 2006, the judges agree, saying instead that Hillsley should never be released.
Their judgment reads: ‘There are some crimes which are so wicked that a sentence less than a life sentence cannot adequately reflect the community interest in retribution and punishment.’
I have to agree. I saw the trauma that man caused. It’s like the Bible says, ‘thou shalt give life for life’.
That’s why I do this job. That’s why I care so much about it. Murderers can’t walk free to kill again. They must be caught.
That’s what I do. I catch killers.
Double Jeopardy
February 2006: 21 years in
I spend the hot summer months at the end of 2005 and beginning of 2006 preparing for the trial of James Hide over the murder of Evelyn in Bowraville. In the first week of February, days before the trial begins, the families of the three children gather at the medical centre on the tiny patch of park in front of the Mission for me to explain what to expect. Even for those who there at the inquest, or the trial over Clinton’s murder, the court is such a different world from theirs, it’s worth repeating its procedures: how a jury is sworn in, the barristers will walk around in robes and wigs, how you have to stand and bow when the judge enters. How, often, they might not understand what’s being said but that Jason Evers and I will be there to answer any questions.
There is a face I do not recognise among the crowd. A psychologist called Tracy, who’s been employed by the State Government to work with the families. A lean, athletic figure – I later learn she is a sprinter – she stands out. She’s beautiful. During the trial, we go out for a drink and she tells me about her childhood growing up in a remote community on the far edge of Western Australia. We sit up talking late into the night. She’s smart and funny, and she really seems to care about the people she’s working with in Bowraville.
She says I’m rare, that she�
��s never seen an Aboriginal community trust a white policeman. It gives me some encouragement at a time when I need it.
* * *
The trial, which starts on 7 February 2006 and is held at Port Macquarie Supreme Court, is exhausting. For Jason and me, a big part of our work as detectives is making sure the witnesses turn up at court. It means driving back and forth from Bowraville, tracking down people who have different ideas of time and appointments from those the court is working to and for whom, the prospect of giving evidence itself can be confronting.
Axeman, our star prison informant, has been drinking again and refusing to give evidence. I follow him, a bottle in each of his hands, along the beach shouting: ‘Mate, come on!’
‘No, you’ll get me killed!’ he shouts back. That’s possible, I think, but then again, over the few years I’ve known Axeman, I’ve started to think of him as a cat; he’s got nine lives. What’s certain is that Axeman is always trouble.
A few years ago, shortly before the 2004 inquest into Evelyn and Clinton’s death, I got a call from witness security, asking if Jason and I could look after Axeman for a night. Some bikies were going after him, they said, though with Axeman you never knew the whole story. We should get him out of Sydney. They said they’d come and get him from us the next day.
Four weeks later we were still washing his clothes, or he was wearing our clothes, and we were travelling round the State with him on jobs, like he was our enormous, tattooed son. On the long drives he’d stick his head out of the car window and I had to tell him: ‘Sit down, stupid!’
In the evenings, we’d put him up in a motel room and hang out in there with him so he didn’t head out to the pub, where he’d only get into trouble. At seven o’clock the next morning, he’d be in the motel pool, sculling a bottle of bourbon.