The Matriarch

by Adrian Tame

  Whoever killed him, it was in November 1983 that Gouroff went missing, two months after Tom Wraith’s death. Wayne Stanhope was next, nine months later in August 1984.

  * * *

  Stanhope’s was the only murder with which Dennis was ever charged—albeit nearly three years after the event. The breakthrough came as a combination of thorough police work early on, and the decline of Dennis’s power towards the end of his life. Much of the credit was due to Detective Irene Moir, who was travelling in a patrol car down Stephenson Street on the night Stanhope was murdered. Because of the unsavoury reputation of the area she noted the numbers of several parked cars. One of these was a green Ford van owned by relatives of Stanhope, and lent to him earlier on the day of his death.

  This same van was found the following day by a farm manager, deep in bushland nearly 100 kilometres from Melbourne, having been deliberately set on fire. The manager also reported seeing a car containing two males in the vicinity at the time. Within days police had linked Irene Moir’s routine noting of the van in Stephenson Street with the burned out shell found in the bush. But there was no indication that anything untoward had happened to Stanhope or that there was anything suspicious about his sudden disappearance.

  Nonetheless Dennis was interviewed, but naturally denied any knowledge of having seen Stanhope on the night he disappeared. It is easy to reflect on how many lives might have been spared over the next three years if some form of admission had been obtained from him.

  Although Stanhope’s body was never found, the reason police were eventually able to charge Dennis with murdering him was due to Dennis’s declining power. However loyal Wayne the builder remained after the event, he and his wife Sandy had been profoundly disturbed by the horror of that night. And so had Dennis’s girlfriend, Miss Jones. Eventually, as Dennis’s health confined him to a hospital bed, the three of them decided to make statements detailing what they had seen. They were then placed under the care of the witness protection scheme—hence the need, even today, to conceal their identities.

  In his statement on Stanhope’s death, Wayne implicated Victor, ‘and either Jamie or Trevor’, in the removal of the body from the sitting room. He also described Dennis burning clothing and towels in an incinerator. At the inquest he described the attitude of those present as ‘quite shocked and hysterical’. The following day, Wayne continued, Dennis ordered him to buy caustic soda and clean the back of a truck parked in the laneway behind 37 Stephenson Street.

  It was not until 11 April 1988 that an inquest was held into Stanhope’s death. Sandy’s evidence included an account of a strange episode in which Dennis carefully wrapped up two tins of dog food as a birthday present for his sister Vicki. ‘Dog’ means an informer in the underworld argot and Dennis, despite his own similar failings, had long suspected Vicki of passing on information to police. He constantly taunted her with gestures like the cans of dog food. At the same time he was still capable of demonstrating a brother’s love for her. When, on one occasion, Vicki arrived in Richmond barefoot and destitute, Dennis immediately walked her up the street and bought her an entire wardrobe of clothes.

  Sandy testified that Dennis had emptied two guns into Stanhope and then waved the second of them at everyone present, telling them: ‘Keep your mouths shut.’ Then he added: ‘This bastard is still alive . . . pass me a fucking knife and I’ll cut his throat.’

  Under cross-examination she described how her son Dale, who was asleep at the time of the murder, had been kept by Dennis overnight at the house. When she told her husband as they were departing to go and get the boy, Dennis had said: ‘No, leave him where he is, he’ll be all right. Just leave him where he is. You can get him tomorrow.’

  Sandy also spoke of threats from Dennis to the lives of her family. But despite this she admitted that she and her husband moved into 102 Stephenson Street four months after the murder and stayed there for twelve months. According to Kathy, however, it was only one week later that they moved in. Once they left, Sandy said, they had no further contact with Dennis and went to great pains to hide their address from him, moving on one occasion when they learnt he had been told of their whereabouts.

  Miss Jones did not appear at the inquest, but a statement by her describing the murder was read to the court. In it she said:

  Dennis then walked over and emptied every bullet he had left into Wayne’s head. The gun would have been about a foot to eighteen inches away from Wayne’s head when Dennis fired the shots. I can remember the jerking movements of Wayne’s head as the bullets struck him. [Sandy] did not move. I remember one bullet seemed to go just past her face. She just froze. I was in shock, and just couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

  On 19 May 1990, Miss Jones gave evidence in an unrelated Supreme Court trial which provided a chilling insight into her life as Dennis’s partner. She told the court she was suffering from heroin addiction during this period, costing her $200 a day, and was occasionally kept in chains as a prisoner by Dennis at both 35 and 37 Stephenson Street. Although she ‘handled’ her heroin addiction, speed was different. ‘I was getting it shoved into my veins by Dennis,’ she said. ‘It would make me crazy in the head, just very uptight and stupid and confused.’

  Miss Jones also explained how she had escaped her captivity in Stephenson Street by grabbing a key, letting herself out and ‘running for my life’ while Dennis was absent. Nowhere in her statements or evidence dealing with Stanhope’s murder did Miss Jones mention Kathy, although she implicated Trevor and Jamie Pettingill in the clean-up afterwards, describing the burning of clothes and the removal of the body.

  Kathy in fact stayed in bed next door, well out of the way.

  I didn’t go next door. You see, at times later on when he said he had killed people, half the time you didn’t know whether it was the truth or not. Because he wasn’t coherent. I stayed in bed. That’s when he took the vacuum cleaner in. Why would I go in there with all those witnesses? No way. If he wanted me in there . . . but why do it in front of an audience, big-noting himself.

  We all went to the inquest, right? And by this time Sandy and Wayne are in the witness protection scheme. We had a barrister, and I asked him: ‘If they were so terrified for their lives, why then did they move into Stephenson Street after the murder?’ But the Coroner did find that members of my family removed the body and did whatever.

  Despite the absence of a body, Coroner Hal Hallenstein found Stanhope died from cardio-respiratory failure following multiple gunshot wounds to the head. He also decided:

  The deceased’s body was removed from the premises by Allen and members of his family, and then disposed of at a place, in circumstances and by a person or persons unknown . . . And I further find that Dennis James Ryan (also known as Dennis Bruce Allen) caused the death of Wayne Patrick Stanhope by shooting.

  Then, in a dramatic afterword, the Coroner passed final judgment on Dennis—exactly a year, less two days, after his death.

  In this matter the actions of Dennis Bruce Allen indicate him to have been a vicious, dangerous and unstable person surrounded by people who both supported and assisted him. In this matter a number of relevant people are still alive, and three key witnesses in these proceedings fear for their lives, and live in hiding from those they believe continue to cherish Allen’s way of life and memory.

  The Coroner then explained why the identities of the three witnesses, Miss Jones, Wayne and Sandy, had been suppressed: ‘It would be unreasonable to risk life for the purposes of this inquest.’

  Although Stanhope’s body has never been found, Victor’s wife, Wendy Peirce, probably led police to his final resting place in 1989 when she was under the witness protection scheme during the period leading up to the committal of her husband and two other men for the Walsh Street killings. After hours of digging in bushland in a national park, police uncovered items of clothing identified as belonging to Stanhope. The theory at the time was that wild pigs may have consumed the body.

  Kathy
will not comment about rumours circulating among police that when the body was being buried Dennis had jumped on Stanhope’s head to force it into the ground, causing it to break apart and making Jamie throw up by the makeshift graveside.

  * * *

  One month after Stanhope died a man called Lindsay Simpson was murdered in what was possibly the most tragic and senseless of all the killings involving Dennis. Simpson, a thirty-two-year-old council worker, was slain on 18 September 1984 in front of his wife and baby daughter, because his killer, Ray ‘Red Rat’ Pollitt, thought he was someone else—Dennis’s heroin dealer, Alan Williams. Simpson was, in fact, an entirely innocent man, unconnected with the underworld. His only mistake was to be married to Williams’s sister, Leonie.

  The link between Dennis and Alan Williams has been explained, but what is unsure is why Dennis wanted Williams killed, something which led to much confusion in media coverage of Pollitt’s various trials. One paper had ‘drug deals and counterfeit money’ behind the dispute, but the sums mentioned varied up to $20,000. Whatever the figure, it is unlikely that Dennis, who was regularly paying Williams larger amounts than this, would have paid Pollitt to kill a reliable dealer simply because he owed him money.

  Kathy says simply: ‘I don’t know what it was for sure, but they fell out over something.’ When Alan Williams gave evidence in Pollitt’s trial he was serving a fourteen-year sentence for conspiring to murder New South Wales policeman Michael Drury (see Chapter Five). Williams told the jury Dennis had owed him between $15,000 and $20,000 for heroin. He also said he carried a gun when he went to see Dennis because he was ‘always on speed, souped-up and crazy’.

  So perhaps there was sufficient bad blood between the two men for Dennis to want Williams out of the way. Either way, the circumstances of Lindsay Simpson’s murder were tragically simple. On that September evening he and his wife drove with their eight-month-old daughter to spend an evening with Williams and his wife Linda in their home in affluent Cheverton Road, Lower Plenty. They arrived about 8 p.m. on a cold, wet night.

  Simpson climbed out of the car and walked around to the back to remove the baby’s stroller as Leonie reached over into the back seat. Suddenly she heard voices, and her husband saying something like, ‘You’ve got the wrong man.’ Then came the words, ‘Get down, sucker,’ and the sound of a click, followed by a shot. (Evidence was given that the first weapon used in the slaying, a sawn-off shotgun, had jammed, and a revolver was used to fire the fatal shot.) Leonie Simpson froze. She is not sure how long passed before she went around to the back of the car to find her husband dying in a pool of blood.

  Police immediately realised that the intended victim was Alan Williams. Early newspaper stories linked the killing to a ‘three-state heroin ring’ and mentioned the previous attempt on Michael Drury’s life. It was still several years before Pollitt came before a court, however. In August 1989 he and an accomplice on a previous bank raid, Gary Jones, were charged at a Melbourne Magistrates Court with conspiring with Dennis, who had been dead for two years, to murder Allan Williams. Pollitt was also charged with murdering Simpson, a count on which Jones had first been remanded two years earlier. A minor furore was created by Pollitt’s counsel, Chris Dane, alleging his client had been bashed by police while in custody, and was being kept in conditions which breached the United Nations Charter.

  The subsequent Supreme Court trial before Mr Justice Beach also had its sensational aspects. Names like Rogerson, Flannery, Williams and Drury kept cropping up, and much was heard of Dennis’s evil empire. It was even said that many police regarded Dennis as an untouchable—impossible to prosecute because witnesses were unlikely to live long enough to testify.

  Once again the star witness was Miss Jones. She spoke of Pollitt having been a regular visitor at Dennis’s various homes in Richmond before the murder. (Pollitt denied knowing Dennis, but conceded he had heard of him.) Miss Jones insisted she had heard Dennis and Pollitt plotting Williams’s execution. She even said Dermis had lured Williams to the house on one occasion so the Red Rat could get a good look at his intended victim. And once again Miss Jones was present when Dennis handed Pollitt a parcel ‘in the shape of a gun’.

  After the shooting Miss Jones was yet again on hand to take a phone call from Pollitt in which he allegedly said, ‘Tell Dennis the job’s done.’ Dennis was most unhappy when he learned the wrong man had been shot, said Miss Jones, and refused to pay Pollitt his second instalment of $5,000. (It is believed the first $5,000 which Pollitt did receive was paid, knowingly by Dennis, with counterfeit notes.) Miss Jones also told of hearing Pollitt’s explanation to Dennis of why he had shot the wrong man: ‘I had to, he saw my face.’

  Pollitt was finally sentenced on 20 June 1990, after the jury had deliberated for two days. Gaoling him for twenty-four years, Mr Justice Beach described the Red Rat as a ‘truly evil man’. Simpson’s wife Leonie, police involved in the case, and the Victims of Crime Assistance League all went public with their approval of the lengthy gaol term. The sentence, however, was later reduced to eighteen years by a full Supreme Court. It will be 2008 before Pollitt is a free man.

  Kathy remains convinced that Pollitt is doing time for a crime he didn’t commit. It is perhaps ironic that she believes Dennis was innocent of murders many policemen had him down for— like Pasche and Gouroff—but conversely blames him for the deaths of men like Simpson for which others have been convicted. In the case of Simpson, Kathy says she saw Dennis immediately after the murder and sweeps aside all the evidence pointing to Pollitt.

  Kathy wasted little time after the trial in making her feelings public. The day after Pollitt’s sentencing she told the Melbourne Sun: ‘I remember the night very well. When Dennis came back from murdering Lindsay Simpson he said: ‘I shot him.’ Then he went inside and burnt his jacket in the forty-four-gallon drum.

  And his overalls.’ Today Kathy stands by her story:

  I really believe that Dennis killed Alan Williams’ brother-in-law. He wanted to do it himself. He knew the difference between Williams and Simpson, sure, but Simpson had seen what Dennis looked like. He killed him because of that. My son Peter said to me later: ‘Dennis would have shot the wife and child as well.’ I said: ‘No he wouldn’t have.’

  I was there when he come back from the killing. The sheila that fucking was a friend of the Williams family was with him, and showed him where the house was. Dennis came back, the tyres were burning, he had the gun, her hair was up in the air like this from the ride, because she was scared stiff. She’d seen what happened. He told me he had done it. He said: ‘I’ve just fucking knocked that fucking cunt. But I’ve knocked the wrong one.’ I couldn’t get up in court because I’d already done that once, in the Robinson case [see below].

  Dennis was the sort of person who would rather do it himself. You’ve got to remember he’d already murdered. If you’d have seen what I saw down that street you would believe he did it, too. He had a witness with him, the sheila who took him. I know who it is, but you can’t give her up.

  I knew the Simpsons. Lindsay’s mother was one of my best friends. I had to cut her off when I went to Stephenson Street. I didn’t want her to come down there where I was involved in drugs. She, to this day, doesn’t know why I’m not her friend. I had to cut all friends. But she still had the decency to come to my Jamie’s funeral. I thought the world of Lindsay, and they saved for years to have that baby of theirs. That hurt me.

  When Jamie Pettingill hurled his home-made bomb on the steps of the Melbourne Coroner’s Court in the city centre in the early hours of 9 May 1985, he was acting on instructions from his brother Dennis. A few hours later an inquest was due to start into the death of a prostitute called Helga Wagnegg and Dennis wanted to issue a warning. There is little doubt that Dermis murdered the thirty-year-old heroin addict and, knowing he was obliged to attend the inquest, he felt a gesture was required to set proceedings off on the right track. Kathy makes no bones about it.

  It was Ja
mie did the bomb. He had it in his hand, and it was ticking loudly, but Dennis wanted the court blown up properly, and Jamie said, ‘Aagh, fuck that, it’s going to go off,’ so he just threw it. It was dark, at night. Over the scanner they had monitoring the police radio it said, ‘Go straight to Richmond,’ and the next thing I see Jamie and The Enforcer jump the high fence at 35 Stephenson Street.

  It is perhaps testimony to Dennis’s arrogance, or even megalomania that he felt by this stage that he could blow up a building simply because the powers-that-be were about to use it as the venue for an inquiry into his handiwork. If Jamie hadn’t panicked when the bomb started ticking, it would have caused serious damage. As the message that went out over the police radio immediately afterwards indicated—’Go straight to Richmond’—they had no doubt who was responsible. By the time the inquest got under way that morning extremely tight security precautions were in place. Everybody entering the building was searched and a number of witnesses had police escorts. The extra police on duty were taking no chances. They had few illusions left about Dennis.

  Helga Wagnegg’s story is only too typical of the human debris that washed up on Dennis’s doorstep, and never made it off again in one piece. Like so many of the regulars who visited Stephenson Street for sex, drugs or guns, Helga’s life was going nowhere. Her last known address was Pentridge Prison, she was hopelessly addicted to heroin, and she sold her body to supply her habit.

  Two years earlier she had brandished a machine gun at the door of a brothel during a robbery attempt that never got off the ground. She had been out of Pentridge on temporary leave only nine days on 8 November 1984, when she made her fatal visit to Stephenson Street. Helga was known at the parlour at 108, and had no difficulty scoring heroin that morning. But she had already consumed close to 100 pills, possibly Serepax, and collapsed on the pavement a few metres from the parlour.