Underbelly 2

by John Silvester

  Birch: ‘What do you mean by that?’

  MacDonald: ‘When you cut off your emotions … I guess it’s part of military training that sometimes you need to switch off your emotions … To be able to perform anything that needs to be done.’

  It took him two hours to murder his travelling mate, bury his body and clean the area of clues. He left Cheyne Beach at 10pm.

  Grainger: ‘Why – why did you kill him – what’s your reason for murdering Mr Williams?’

  MacDonald: ‘To assume his identity.’

  He was asked by police if he had any mental illnesses and he said he had been diagnosed with a personality disorder.

  MacDonald: ‘Perhaps I don’t share the same emotions that other people do.’

  Grainger: ‘Do you know that killing someone’s wrong?’

  MacDonald: ‘I know that many people consider it to be, yes.’

  Grainger: ‘Did you consider the killing of Ron Williams wrong?’

  MacDonald: ‘No.’

  Grainger: ‘Why?’

  MacDonald: ‘To me, it seemed appropriate.’

  Birch: ‘Have you found yourself in other circumstances where you’ve found it necessary to kill someone?’

  MacDonald: ‘Yes.’

  Birch: ‘When?’

  MacDonald: ‘In Vietnam.’

  But that interview came later. What he did when he left Cheyne Beach was dump his car, throw the number plates into a river, hitchhike back to Melbourne. He’d also discarded two identities, Paul Jacobs and Alexander MacDonald. But he kept the postcards Williams had trusted him to post. And post them he did, gradually, over several months. No-one who got the postcards could know that the return address scrawled on the back didn’t exist, any more than the man who’d written them. But his name did. The Vietnam veteran, bank robber and killer had become Ron Williams.

  THE CROOK

  ALEXANDER Robert MacDonald was a Queenslander. The first time he saw the inside of a police cell was when he appeared at the Brisbane Magistrates’ Court on 1 December, 1967, charged with theft. He was fined $100 and given a two-year suspended sentence.

  Perhaps it was suggested that military discipline might help him from returning before the courts because a month later he joined the army, entering the Recruit Training Battalion. In April, 1968, he transferred to the Artillery School in Manly, NSW, to train as a gunner. He had two tours of duty in Vietnam, the second at his own request.

  Much later, he was described as having been a commando in the Special Air Services. This was untrue. But police believe he may have learnt about explosives in Vietnam when he was involved in jungle clearances, and he would have become familiar with firearms.

  In 1972 he was charged with ‘unlawfully killing cattle’, fined $50 and ordered to pay $80 restitution at the Caboolture Magistrates’ Court in Queensland.

  In October that year he literally walked away from the army, going absent without leave from his base. He never returned, and was discharged a year later under a rule for long-term absentees.

  Ten years later he would write to the army and ask for his service medals for his two tours of duty. He was told he was not entitled to the medals as he had gone absent without leave.

  In March, 1978, the licensee of the Crown Hotel in Collie, Western Australia, found a plastic lunch box at the rear of the hotel with a note addressed to him. It said the box contained a gelignite bomb that had not been primed. It was a warning.

  MacDonald demanded $5000 from each hotelier in the district and threatened to bomb their pubs if they didn’t pay. He kept his word. Three months later a bomb exploded at the Crown, badly damaging the hotel, and it was only luck that stopped MacDonald being a cop-killer. A local policeman handled and examined the gelignite package only two minutes before it exploded.

  MacDonald was arrested after he made an extortion demand for $60,000 from the hotels. He had built a bomb with four sticks of gelignite and had another sixteen sticks hidden in the bush. Police had no doubt he would have continued blowing up pubs until he was paid his extortion money.

  He was sentenced to seven years over the bombings and extortion but served far less. He was released in September, 1981, and headed to Queensland.

  Thirteen months later MacDonald was again a wanted man. Police said that between November 1982 and March 1983 he robbed several banks and service stations in central and northern Queensland.

  It was during this time that MacDonald began to take hostages during robberies. In three bank robberies he took a staff member with him to ensure the police were not immediately called.

  On 11 February, 1983, he robbed the National Australia bank at Mossman of almost $10,000. He took a staff member to the edge of a cane fields nearly five hundred metres from the bank and then vanished into the cane on foot.

  Police believe he used a CB radio to contact his partner to pick him up.

  In July, 1983, MacDonald was arrested in the Northern Territory as he was about to return to Perth. Again, the former soldier showed his extraordinary single mindness. On 28 July he escaped from the Berrimah Jail while awaiting extradition. In the escape he broke his ankle but still managed to travel four painful kilometres. He was forced to surrender after twelve hours on the hop.

  He was sentenced to seventeen years jail. In 1984 he was given another six months for attempting to escape from Townsville’s Stuart Prison. Not to be deterred he tried to escape again, this time bashing a prison officer and trying to take a female nurse hostage.

  He was given another five years for his efforts.

  He had served twelve of his twenty-three year sentence for eight armed robberies, two charges of conspiracy to commit armed robbery, four counts of unlawful imprisonment and the attempted escapes, when he decided he’d been in jail long enough. This time his escape was successful.

  Despite the fact he was serving a long sentence for crimes of violence and had tried to escape repeatedly he was given a position of trust. At the Borallon Correctional Centre, near Ipswich, he was allowed outside on gardening duty. On 12 September, 1995, he simply walked off. ‘I guess I couldn’t see the end of it,’ he later told police. He had three years to serve until he would have been eligible for parole.

  He said he walked away and ‘skirted the general Brisbane area.’

  Birch: ‘So how far would you have walked on foot?’

  MacDonald: ‘Over a period of a week, a couple of hundred k’s I guess.’

  He said he camped in the bush near Gympie for about three weeks after the escape.

  On 20 October, 1995, he robbed the Westpac Bank in the Queensland town of Cooroy, near Noosa Heads. Then he escaped on a pushbike.

  He went into the bank carrying his ten-shot .22 semi-automatic rifle. He said he selected the bank because it was near scrub where he could disappear.

  He rang the manager earlier that day to make an appointment. Six staff members were in the bank. He was politely ushered into the manager’s office, where he produced the gun and demanded money. He was given $15,000, stuffed it into a travel bag and walked out. ‘I got on the pushbike and rode off along some back roads into the scrub.’

  He camped out for two nights to beat the police road blocks. He used the money to set himself up with camping gear that he planned to use for more robberies.

  He then robbed the Westpac bank at Airlie Beach on 15 December, 1995. ‘While I was in prison in Stuart Creek, a chap there had told me how he robbed the bank in Airlie Beach.’

  He got there by walking and hitchhiking and then camped in the scrub. He needed only to glance at the bank the day before to know his prison mate had been right. It was an easy target.

  Next day he went into the bank and said he had a complaint about an account. Then he produced the gun and demanded money. He walked out with $83,000 and a female teller as hostage. After they’d walked about 80 metres he let the frightened woman go, then walked into the bush.

  After murdering Ron Williams he was to use the same method to commit five
more bank robberies in Yepoon, in Queensland, Airlie Beach (again), Laurieton and Coonbarabran in NSW and Busselton in Western Australia.

  Unlike most bandits he made little effort to hide his identity. He didn’t use the usual armed robber’s disguise of a balaclava or rubber mask. He wore a white Panama hat, almost as an identifiable trade mark, until he lost it during one robbery when he was chased into the bush.

  He was a disciplined, cool, loner who went to great pains to cover his tracks. He lived quietly in Victoria as Ron Williams and would never pull a robbery there, instead travelling big distances interstate to pull bank jobs. He wanted police to believe that one of Australia’s most wanted men was half-hermit, living in a tropical rain forest, coming out only to rob banks. No-one, he believed, would look near Melbourne for the Queensland bushranger.

  He even had a fresh tattoo, a parrot with the name Megan, put on his left arm, covering an older tattoo that was recorded on his police record.

  He was asked by Senior Detective Allan Birch why he travelled out of Victoria to rob banks. ‘You could drive to Tocumwal or to Geelong. Why is it that you went north?’ the policeman said.

  MacDonald answered matter-of-factly: ‘Well, to hopefully convince the police in Queensland that I was still in that area.’

  Bizarrely, MacDonald was to come within metres of creating a huge international incident during an attempt to rob a bank at a tropical beach resort.

  He took four days to drive from Melbourne to Cairns in his four wheel drive, and then took a bus along the winding coast road, past crocodile farms, caravan parks and five-star resorts to Port Douglas, later to become a popular holiday destination for American presidents, publishers and journalists. He took with him a second-hand black mountain bike he’d bought for $100 at the Cairns Cash Converters, and his dismantled double-barrel shotgun in his knapsack.

  For a week he camped near the beach and walked around town. Like any other tourist, he wandered down the main street, past pubs, cafes and the prestigious Nautilus open air restaurant favoured by Bill and Hillary Clinton in happier times. But, unlike most tourists, he kept his eye on the Commonwealth Bank branch in the centre of the town.

  He noted staff movements and saw that one man always arrived at the same time and parked his white Falcon in an underground car park, before walking a few metres to the bank.

  He decided to abduct the staff member and demand that cash be delivered to him.

  On Friday, 30 May, as the young staff member walked out of the carpark, MacDonald strolled over and grabbed him. He walked quietly with the man to the bank and then slipped a note to a female teller. It demanded that all the money in the bank be delivered to a spot on the banks of a river, about eight kilometres from Port Douglas, in exchange for the staff member’s life.

  The gunman and the hostage drove to the river to wait near a disused bridge next to the highway. It was a popular fishing spot but MacDonald knew it was low tide and the area should be empty. But a fisherman, who obviously could not read a tide chart, wandered up to the robber and his nervous hostage as they waited.

  ‘A chap who had been fishing in the river came along and I had to take him in tow, so to speak,’ MacDonald was to tell police.

  The three waited about near the road. MacDonald knew there was only a few police at Port Douglas and he could slip into the cane fields or rainforest if they began a search.

  But his plan unravelled when he spotted a huge contingent of police on the main road. When he saw four marked police cars, motor bikes and unmarked units he believed he was in big trouble. ‘It didn’t pan out the way I figured it would.’

  What he didn’t know until much later was that it was Murphy’s Law at work. MacDonald had done his homework on the bank – but he hadn’t read the local papers. The Chinese Vice Premier, Zhu Rongji, was in town after a tour around Australia.

  Mr Zhu was heading for the Cairns airport with his massive police escort when he passed over the bridge near where MacDonald was hiding.

  No-one knew that a killer with a loaded gun got within metres of one of the leaders of the biggest country in the world. But the killer didn’t know either. He thought that half the Queensland police force was about to descend on him, so he let the two men go and pedalled his second-hand bike about three kilometres, in one of the slowest getaways on record, then disappeared into the bush once more. He then walked more than forty kilometres back to Cairns, collected his car and drove to Airlie beach to rob the Westpac branch a second time. It was a long way to come from Victoria, and he wasn’t going to go home empty handed.

  On 2 June, 1996, he turned up at a Somerville boat yard, Yaringa Boat Sales, saying he wanted to buy an old timber cabin cruiser that had been advertised in a boat magazine for $23,000. He didn’t seem too worried about the price. He would have been churlish to quibble. Three weeks earlier, on 10 May, he’d robbed the Yepoon Commonwealth Bank of $107,000.

  He produced a $500 deposit to settle the deal on the cabin cruiser.

  He returned ten days later with a briefcase. He opened it and took out $10,000 in cash. Three days later he was back with the same briefcase and another $12,500.

  He was going through a messy divorce, he explained, and didn’t want his ex-wife to know about the money. So he carried it in the briefcase. It seemed reasonable to the salesmen.

  He was to spend $80,000 on the boat, Sea Venture, fitting satellite navigation gear and reconditioned motors.

  He paid $1200 cash to moor the boat at Yaringa and began to live on board. He told locals he was a builder and renovator who dabbled in prospecting.

  He began to drink at the Somerville Hotel and developed a group of mates. At least six times he disappeared for up to eight weeks at a time. He told his new friends he was prospecting in Queensland. Which, in a way, he was. But not with a pick and shovel.

  Just before Christmas, 1996, he threw a huge party for his friends, supplying all the food and liquor to celebrate completing the main work on the boat. During the refit a worker opened a waterproof case in the boat. Inside he found a sawn-off shotgun. He decided, perhaps wisely, not to ask questions.

  In June, 1997, MacDonald told his friends he was short of cash and needed $10,000 before he could finish the boat and sail to the Solomon Islands where, he said, he was going to hook up with a friend.

  He said he would head north on 27 June. Police believe he was going back to Queensland for one more armed robbery before sailing out of Australia to freedom.

  He loaded up his Toyota with camping gear and provisions, then drove to the Hume Motor Inn in Fawkner and booked in to room eight.

  While he was preparing to head north the television program, Australia’s Most Wanted, screened a segment on the escapee-bandit. Police received a call to look for a Toyota Four wheel drive in Melbourne’s north. Within hours they found the car, registered to Ron Williams. A police check confirmed that a Mr Ron Williams was a reported missing person.

  A detective walked into the restaurant where MacDonald was sitting and immediately knew he was the wanted man. He was arrested by members of the Melbourne armed robbery squad outside the motel at 5.15pm on Thursday, 26 June, with his brother. He was extradited to Perth, pleaded guilty of murder and sentenced to life in prison.

  When police went through his papers they found documents from the Christian Children’s Fund. Here was an armed robber who could kill a harmless stranger and steal his identity without a moment’s guilt, and yet sponsor a poverty-stricken child in South America.

  THE INTERVIEW

  RECORD of interview between Senior Detective Allan Birch and Ronald Joseph Williams, of Ford Road, Shepparton, conducted in the offices of the armed robbery squad on Thursday, 26 June, 1997. There is a long discussion where the suspect refuses to agree to be fingerprinted until it is explained that the prints can be taken by force.

  BIRCH: ‘I suspect you of armed robbery and escape. In simple terms, Mr Williams – I believe you are actually Alexander MacDonald. I have information
that Alexander MacDonald is responsible for the commission of a number of armed robberies and has escaped a prison in the state of Queensland.’

  Birch then informs the suspect that police have the legal authority to take fingerprints forcibly.

  BIRCH: ‘If you don’t comply or you don’t want to comply with that request, then I’ll seek authorisation from my superior to take them forcefully from you. All right?’

  MacDONALD: ‘And who would that superior be? The man who assaulted me earlier?’

  BIRCH: ‘Well, I don’t know what you are talking about.’

  MacDONALD: ‘The gentleman who was here earlier on with you.’

  SENIOR DETECTIVE MICHAEL GRAINGER: ‘What I suggest we do at this stage, Mr Williams, is that we suspend the interview.’

  (After long discussions, MacDonald agrees to be fingerprinted.)

  MacDONALD: ‘Well, it would seem that I have no option.’

  (After the fingerprints are taken MacDonald knows it is useless to continue the charade of pretending to be Ronald Williams.)

  BIRCH: ‘Can you please state to me your full name and address?’

  MacDONALD: ‘Alexander Robert MacDonald, no fixed place of abode.’

  BIRCH: ‘Right. Mr MacDonald, how did you come to be here in the office of the armed robbery squad?

  MacDONALD: ‘I was apprehended, shall we say, on Sydney Road at Fawkner.’

  BIRCH: ‘Where have you been residing for the last, say – six months?’

  MacDONALD: ‘I live on and off in the Millewa State Forest.’

  BIRCH: ‘And whereabouts is that situated?’

  MacDONALD: ‘It’s near Tocumwal in New South Wales.’

  BIRCH: ‘Right, and you live in the forest?’

  MacDONALD: ‘I use tents and tarpaulins.’

  Police asked MacDonald why how he came to be known as Williams.

  MacDONALD: ‘Well, it’s an identity I’ve assumed since being an escapee.’

  BIRCH: ‘Right. Now how did you assume that identity?’

  MacDONALD: ‘By taking identity from the actual person.’