Underbelly 2

by John Silvester

  A policewoman in tears asked three male colleagues for a handkerchief. They couldn’t help. They were using theirs. A female hand came from behind and gave her a tissue.

  A woman arrived in a wheelchair, pushed by her husband. She was a former detective who had discharged herself hours earlier from hospital against medical advice. Her last nightshift on patrol had been with Gary.

  A group of detectives and Special Operations Group police who had worked through the night raiding the homes of known amphetamines manufacturers, came straight from the office. Puffy eyed from lack of sleep and collective grief they stood, heads bowed, on the manicured academy lawns.

  The only group that couldn’t make it were the men and women assigned to investigate the double killing. The first few days of a complex murder investigation are the most important and they knew the clock was ticking.

  There were police from every rank and of every type. From police heroes — valor award winners — to one on bail facing serious criminal charges. From the chief commissioner and his command team to the twenty-three recruits training at the academy.

  A few even came from overseas. One policeman cut short a year’s leave overseas to fly back from Turkey. He was one of the pallbearers.

  Most of the 4000 people at the funeral were police. Some were friends who had worked with Gary Silk. Others didn’t know him, but were equally moved. The mates were the ones who laughed at the jokes and murmured in recognition at the anecdotes in the eulogy. The colleagues remained solemn; they were there as an act of solidarity. It was also a show of strength, as if to prove by their presence that the killers of Gary Silk and Rod Miller will be pursued by thousands of blue uniforms.

  A lone piper led the pallbearers from the chapel.

  Outside, four police horses waited. The police band played softly as the pallbearers — one crying silently — lowered the coffin into the waiting hearse. A distraught woman slipped over on the bitumen. Family members wept and held each other as the minutes passed.

  The delay was for a good reason: thousands of police were silently moving to form a guard of honor in the street outside. They lined both sides of View Mount Road, at some points six deep. The line of blue uniforms and white hats stretched for more than a kilometre. It was joined by dignitaries, members of the public and the Silk family.

  Just before the order to march was given, the chief commissioner, Neil Comrie, and the former chief, Mick Miller, moved from the grounds to the head of the honor guard. They stood shoulder to shoulder. Miller has rarely been seen at police functions since his retirement more than a decade ago, but this was different.

  The horses — two greys and two chestnuts — wheeled and led off the march. The band leader followed, and the band fell in behind him. The escort of twenty-four uniformed police — sixteen of them the newest constables in the force — slow-marched ahead of the hearse to the beat of a muffled drum. By then the mist began to clear. It was 12.45.

  The chief commissioner was first to salute as Gary Silk passed. Then they all did. Thousands of them, making a long, slow ripple as the hearse inched past. They stood silent, and at attention, until the hearse cleared the guard of honor. It took twenty-five minutes.

  The next day it all happened again, when Rod Miller took his final ride.

  CHAPTER 25

  A month later

  Eliminating suspects, one by one

  ‘We go to bed at night and wonder if the doors are going to come off in a raid.’

  WITHIN days of the murders of Gary Silk and Rod Miller, police had a short list of possible suspects, but there was only one in bold — the name of armed robber and escaper Peter Gibb.

  Gibb was one of the few criminals in Australia to end up having a movie made about him, or more correctly, about his love life.

  His twenty years as a violent criminal had not excited great public interest, but when he blasted his way out of the Melbourne Remand Centre in March, 1993, with the help of his lover, a prison officer and married mother of two called Heather Parker, he was headline material.

  He was on the run for six days with Parker and fellow escaper, Archie Butterly, but it was long enough to make Gibb a national name.

  Butterly, a tough career criminal, was destined to be a bit player in the film. He was shot dead at the recapture in circumstances that have never been adequately explained. Parker and Gibb were caught during a shoot-out near Jamieson in north-eastern Victoria. Butterly was found dead with a bullet in the head. The State Coroner, Graeme Johnstone, was unable to conclude if Parker, Gibb or Butterly himself fired the fatal shot.

  During their escape a policeman who tried to apprehend them, Senior Constable Warren Treloar, was shot in the chest and shoulder. Butterly shot Treloar and Gibb and took the injured policeman’s gun, emptying all but one bullet from the chamber.

  He then gave the gun to his fellow escaper. It was that bullet that killed Butterly.

  In the early 1980s another associate of Gibb’s, Stephen Kenneth Haines, was murdered. He was allegedly killed because Gibb believed he was given bail after informing to police.

  Detectives from Operation Lorimer, the task force investigating the police murders, were given Gibb’s name as a possible suspect within two days of the killings. He was violent, had used guns and had been involved in an escape where a policeman had been shot.

  Even more intriguing was the fact that one of the key investigators into the Gibb escape was Gary Silk, then with the prison squad. Perhaps Gibb was one of the bandits who had been robbing the Chinese restaurants? Maybe when Silk stopped the car the two recognised each other and Gibb knew he would never be able to bluff his way out, so he opened fire.

  It was only a theory, but one that had to be checked by the Operation Lorimer detectives.

  Police began to look at Gibb. While he was known to be a cool criminal he showed no signs of behaving as a man who had just killed two police. He was seen going to work and living a seemingly straight forward life.

  By the middle of September Gibb knew he was ‘tropical’ and under investigation. He accurately predicted he was likely to be questioned over the killings.

  He spoke to Woman’s Day to announce his engagement to Ms Parker, in an article clearly inspired by Mills and Boon, and said he was aware of police interest. He said he knew his name had been mentioned in connection with the police murders.

  ‘We go to bed at night and wonder if the doors are going to come off in a raid,’ he said.

  It was around this time police decided to move. It was time to pull in Gibb, and his associates, to see if they were involved, to interview them and get their statements.

  If they were not involved then it would be in everybody’s interest to eliminate then from the investigation. He didn’t need to wonder for long. On 16 September, one month after the murders, Gibb was arrested as he left his Bayswater home about 6.30 am. He was not surprised. In fact, he had been waiting for it.

  But since Gibb was named as a suspect into the double police killings, intense police investigations have failed to turn gossip into fact.

  The former tough criminal has behaved normally and may have even developed a social conscience. He was seen at the Jabiluka protest outside the North Limited building earlier this month. He may have just been heading to a building site nearby where he works, not far from the St Kilda Road police building that houses Operation Lorimer taskforce on the sixteenth floor.

  Police decided to question Gibb and associates to either strengthen the case against them, or eliminate them from inquiries so resources would not be wasted on wild theories.

  But Gibb’s arrest became public knowledge only after attempts to grab an associate did not go exactly to plan.

  The Special Operations Group was called in to control the arrest. While Gibb and his crew were drifting as likely suspects the SOG had to work on the belief the men they were going to grab were armed and prepared to shoot police.

  They did their homework and planned to pull over o
ne of the targets, Ian Burtoft, near his home in a quiet St Albans street. But they had to wait for the right moment, and that moment came on the Western Ring Road in early peak hour traffic.

  Motorists with mobile phones rang the media within seconds and most of Melbourne was informed over breakfast that detectives from Operation Lorimer had made arrests.

  Detective Chief Inspector Rod Collins was quick to hose down expectations. He said this was not a major breakthrough, just one line of inquiry. It is believed Gibb spoke to police and provided an alibi. He is no longer seen as a prime suspect.

  The SOG conducted at least twenty level-three raids (where armed offenders may be present) over the police murders in the first month. Safe breakers, amphetamine dealers, armed robbers and criminals who deal in guns have been interviewed. ‘It is a process of elimination at this stage,’ a senior policeman said at the time.

  Some have been charged with offences unrelated to the murders. Heather Parker was interviewed at the Knox police station on the day Gibb was arrested. While she was apparently unable to assist the Lorimer investigation, police were happy to chat to her about other matters. She was charged with handling stolen property and unlawful possession of a windsurfer.

  Many of those questioned by police can prove where they were at the time of the killing. One had to admit he was in bed with another criminal’s wife. The red-faced woman confirmed his whereabouts.

  Many names have been thrown up in the investigation, including a convicted murderer who has breached parole, a veteran armed robber and murderer, as well as a series of drug-addicted offenders with violent criminal offenders.

  ‘There are a lot of criminals in society who will be asked where they were on the night. We would prefer they came to us before we had to come looking for them,’ Detective Chief Inspector Collins said.

  ‘If they can justify their movements on the night then we will get out of their lives.’

  More than 30 police were working on Operation Lorimer backed by forensic experts, divisional detectives and the serious crime squads.

  They are looking at several theories of who killed Gary Silk and Rod Miller.

  An armed robbery squad team is looking to find the bandits who robbed at least eleven restaurants and convenience stores in the eastern suburbs as part of Operation Hamada. Silk and Miller were killed near the Silky Emperor restaurant in Warrigal Road while on surveillance duty.

  Police intelligence indicates the bandits who robbed the restaurants may be the same two responsible for about twenty eight unsolved raids from 1992 to 1994.

  At the time police launched an investigation, code-named Operation Pigout, to find the men who robbed pizza shops and restaurants from Seaford to Nunawading. The methods were always the same. They wore masks, entered through the back door and used tape to tie up staff and customers.

  At a Blackrock restaurant in Melbourne’s southern bayside area on 1 November, 1992, one of the bandits shot two victims when he accidentally fired his gun. During another robbery on 4 April, 1994, the robbers threatened to shoot staff and patrons who tried to follow them.

  Police who know Gibb say he would not be involved in a series of small-time armed robberies which each net less than $2000. He was also in jail during Operation Pigout.

  But police also have to consider the possibility that the killers of Silk and Miller were not the bandits they were after, but two other armed criminals who happened to be stopped by the police just after midnight on 16 August.

  Detectives have been told to keep open minds and not to discount any possibility.

  They have checked files looking for known violent criminals with access to guns, but they also know the killers could be ‘cleanskins’ — offenders with no criminal records.

  It has happened before. The offenders responsible for the Russell Street bombing in March, 1986, were not known as heavy criminals and were discovered only after an investigation into stolen cars.

  Two of the most prolific robbers of the 1970s were unknown to police. They were twin brothers, known as the After Dark Bandits, and they robbed more than twenty TAB agencies and banks before they were caught when one shot a policeman.

  Lorimer investigators had to deal with nearly 2000 intelligence reports containing all the leads that came in the month after the killings.

  The information was collated on a specially-designed computer program so analysts could provide all data on any element of the inquiry immediately and cross-check intelligence reports.

  But each intelligence report has to be checked and each piece of information can take weeks to verify or discard.

  A fortnight into the investigation 250 police were given information from Operation Lorimer to check in order to clear the backlog. With such massive amount of information already on file detectives have to be sure every lead is checked thoroughly. It is easy for the right clues to slip through the net.

  A taskforce in the US investigating a triple murder failed to solve the case for more than six months because one vital tip from a member of public was mislaid and not checked immediately. Detective Chief Inspector Collins has said publicly that this will be a long investigation.

  A month into it, detectives had a list of names to work with.

  But they didn’t know if the killers’ were on it.

  CHAPTER 26

  Last roll of the dice

  The death of Mersina Halvagis

  One phone call could provide the breakthrough

  IT was more than a year since her grandmother had died, but still she travelled across town each fortnight to visit the grave and leave fresh flowers. That’s the sort of girl she was.

  This time, it was the Saturday before the 1997 Melbourne Cup. She got to Fawkner Cemetery, in Melbourne’s northern suburbs, around 3.45 pm. Her plan was to tend the grave, make the long trip home to Mentone to change, then drive back to her fiance’s house in Mill Park so they could go out to dinner together.

  As usual, she stopped at the cemetery’s florists to buy some flowers and a drink. She chose some pretty, long stemmed blue and white statice blooms before driving on.

  She travelled slowly along Seventh Avenue in the Memorial Park, past the rose bushes and the Methodist area, to the neatly-kept Greek section, pulling up in the small carpark to her left.

  The mourner passed a small, weathered picnic table and thirty two graves on her left as she walked along the gravel path before she got to the dark grey headstone on the grave of her grandmother, Mersina, who’d died on 14 May, 1996, aged eighty six.

  On other visits she had often put flowers on graves that looked neglected. She hated the thought of anyone, even strangers who died years earlier, being forgotten. That was the sort of girl she was.

  She was about to put water in the matching stone urns on the grave ready for the flowers when she was stabbed to death.

  Her name was Mersina Halvagis. She was twenty five.

  DIMITRIA Halvagis had been to the movies at Crown Casino with four friends. She was surprised when she arrived home early Sunday morning to find the lights on and her parents awake. They said her sister, older by two years, had been missing for hours.

  Her younger brother, Bill, took one car to look for the missing woman and Dimitria, too, headed off to search. She knew Mersina had left her fiance Angelo Gorgievski’s home at Mill Park, intending to drive to the cemetery.

  Dimitria drove past relatives’ homes, looking for Angelo’s red Telstra, which Mersina had been driving. Because her sister was so reliable and predictable, Dimitria was frightened. She knew only an accident, or worse, could have kept her from coming home on time.

  Although she feared the news would be bad, she could not imagine it would be the worst.

  Angelo and his father were also looking for Mersina. They could see his car in the cemetery carpark and after a brief, fruitless search they called the police. It was about 4 am.

  When Dimitria arrived at the Sydney Road entrance of the cemetery she saw a police car parked
out the front. She went down Box Forest Road, to within fifty metres of the Greek section, and could see the several more police cars and the area ribboned with crime scene tape. ‘I thought “Goodness me, what’s going on”?’

  Her mobile phone rang. It was the Broadmeadows police. They wanted her to come to the station to talk. She refused. ‘The police are here, you come here,’ she told them.

  They persuaded her to come to the station. Dimitria and Bill were kept in separate interview rooms until 11 am.

  In a case of a suspicious death homicide detectives have priority. Solving the case is the most important thing. Counselling and support for relatives comes later. In the beginning, everyone has to be treated as a suspect. Investigators like to break the news to family and close friends to watch their reaction.

  Nick and Dimitria were told in the Broadmeadows police station and their responses could not have been more varied. Bill, instantly filled with shock and grief, began to vomit. Dimitria hardly reacted. ‘All I can remember was seeing a policewoman crying. I wasn’t. I was wondering why,’ she was to recall.

  She was asked whether she could drive home. She responded, ‘Of course I can. I’ve got a licence.’

  When she arrived home relatives tried to grab her for a compassionate hug and she pushed them away. ‘I pushed them away because I thought there was nothing wrong.

  ‘I couldn’t believe Mersina was gone.’

  ON the first weekend of November, Crew One of the homicide squad was on call. This meant the detectives on that crew would be first called to any suspicious deaths in Victoria from 3pm on Saturday to 9am on Monday.

  The head of the crew, Senior Sergeant Greg Hough, was doing an internal course. His team was being run by veteran homicide squad investigator, Senior Sergeant Roland Legg, when the beeper went off in the early hours of Sunday to say there’d been a stabbing.