The Matriarch

by Adrian Tame

  On the box commentators are licking their lips at the prospect of an exciting day’s play, and pre-match pitch appraisals are under way. Then Kathy hears the noise for the first time. Initially she’s not sure where it’s coming from, or what it is, but it has every hair on the back of her neck standing on end. But then, just as quickly as it comes her first bristling fear is gone, and she relaxes back in her seat. It must have been some glitch in the TV set. Then, halfway through the opening over, there it is again— unmistakably close this time, coming not from the screen but from next door, a low, guttural growling of something or someone in terrible pain. There’s also an edge of menace in there somewhere. But is it menace, or just terror?

  Kathy is now bolt upright, the cricket forgotten. That’s Dennis. Next door. Who’s in there with him, and what are they doing to him? She’s out of her chair, through the gate and onto the patio at 37 as the sound builds to a high, keening wail. As she rattles the front door handle the awful voice of her son coming from the other side has changed to a crazed gibbering. She should have known Dennis’s door would be locked. As far as she is aware he is alone, no Enforcer on hand, so of course he would have locked up.

  She races back to 35, half sobbing in her panic, and frantically searches for the bunch of keys that will let her into 37, but they are nowhere. The extent of Kathy’s fear forces her into something that would normally be unthinkable. She grabs the phone and dials Richmond police station, a familiar number from all the bail and other arrangements she’s had to make over the years. Within minutes a couple of plainclothes detectives have arrived, and by now Kathy has located the keys. As the three of them enter the front gate at 37 all is suddenly quiet. Somehow it’s worse than the screaming. Kathy’s hands are trembling as she undoes first the front door, then the security grille, and leads the way inside. One of the detectives pushes past her and heads for Dennis’s bedroom, as if he’s been here before and knows where to look.

  Almost unwillingly Kathy cranes over his shoulder through the open door, not wanting to see, not wanting to know. The first thing she takes in is the rumpled sheets at the foot of the bed. Then Dennis’s half-naked form. His torso is twisted across the top of the bed, but his head and shoulders have somehow come to rest on the little bedside table, looking away from her. There’s no blood, no sign of violence, other than the strange, twisted line of his body. Kathy hears the detectives muttering something about ‘faking it’. Dennis is due in court next day, and he’s been known to find a way out of such inconveniences. But then one of them takes Dennis’s head, almost tenderly, in his hands and turns it face upwards. His mouth is half-open and drooling spittle across the pillow, his eyes glazed and sightless. At first Kathy thinks he’s dead, but then words intrude into the turmoil in her head. ‘I reckon he’s had a stroke,’ says the officer. ‘Quick, get an ambulance.’

  Three hours later Kathy is by his bedside at St Vincent’s Hospital in the city. Dennis’s still unconscious form is shaking and jerking spasmodically beneath the cover, but the nurses and doctors have come and gone, doing all they can for now. Then suddenly his eyes flicker open and take in the surroundings. She sees his hand, outside the covers, on the side where the doctor says the stroke has hit. It’s as if he’s trying to clench and unclench his fist, but nothing happens other than a strange twitching. His eyes seem to focus on her and he starts to groan, the sounds finally forming into words. Slurred and unsure, but still words.

  ‘Jesus it’s hard to me, this,’ he mumbles. ‘Go out every night working, get all this money, and I bought this hospital.’ With an enormous effort his eyes fix on Kathy’s. ‘You’ve got to get on to Charlie and Andrew to bring the papers in.’ And then the mouth and eyes close again.

  Charlie Nikakis and Andrew Fraser. At least he remembers who his legal representatives are, Kathy reflects as his head lolls back onto the pillow. An hour later he wakes again, and this time appears more lucid. Kathy puts down the book she has been reading: ‘Do you know that you bought this hospital?’

  Dennis looks at her, and there is a flash of something familiar about the eyes: ‘You fucking idiot, I only bought this fucking room.’

  The last eight months of Dennis’s life were marked by tragedy, further deaths and increasing pressure from police. The officers he had been paying for information and warnings of impending raids were themselves becoming subject to scrutiny, and the Richmond empire seemed under siege. Dennis’s friends were becoming fewer and the list of his enemies was becoming unmanageable.

  I knew Wayne and Sandy were going to give him up. I said to Wayne: ‘Why are you a friend of my son’s? What’s in it for you?’ He said to me: ‘Can’t he just have a friend?’ I said: ‘No, he can’t.’ On his last birthday I asked all the soldiers: ‘Can we all put in together and buy him one of those double fridges?’ You got the freezer and fridge for about three grand. They wouldn’t be in it. And he used to give them a grand for their birthdays. Always. Because Dennis died with no friends, and in the hospital, when I thought he was lucid, I said: ‘You haven’t got any friends.’

  August 1986 was a particularly difficult month. First there was the suicide of Sissy inside Pentridge, which hit Dennis harder than most people, other than Kathy, realised. Lindy and Jade were removed into the care of Sissy’s mother, and Dennis began drinking even more heavily than usual. This and his evergrowing dependency on speed were taking an inevitable toll on his health.

  * * *

  After his stroke on 19 January Dennis entered St Vincent’s, and Wayne, Sandy and Miss Jones began to see an end to their nightmare. His empire clearly on the wane, the trio negotiated witness protection deals with police, and began to sing. But Dennis was getting sick of hospital and Kathy wanted him home. The unspoken feeling was that he had only weeks to live.

  Doctors had found Dennis was suffering from an extremely rare bacterial infection, causing pieces of his heart to break off and be transported into his bloodstream. One had lodged in his leg and another, much more seriously, in his brain. His massive addiction to speed almost certainly contributed to his condition.

  He’d been starving himself in hospital to punish me, and it did punish me. Then he started hounding us to take him home. Well I got Kim Nelson and her husband, and Lex was there, and we were going to hire the wheelchair, and Kim was going to nurse him and everything. But unknown to us the homicide squad told the hospital, if Dennis was to be signed out to ring ’em. Well they rang ’em. So the two homicide squad jacks get out the lift. Now this is approximately 12.30 in the day. As one of them comes towards me I could smell the grog. So they wheel Dennis past me, and I think Lex had a blue with one of them in the car park, a physical fight, because he was there to help us, Lex.

  This was 11 March 1987. Dennis was taken by police car to the homicide squad offices where he was charged with Wayne Stanhope’s murder, largely on the testimony of Miss Jones, Wayne and Sandy. He was then taken to Melbourne Magistrates’ Court, where the charge was formally put before magistrate Brian Clothier. Dennis had become visibly emaciated and had lost several kilograms through his illness. His gruff speaking voice had dropped to a barely audible whisper and, too weak to stand, he was pushed into court in a wheelchair. The man police once said was an untouchable, because no witness would live long enough to testify against him, had become an object of pity, rather than fear. He was remanded to 11 June and sent back to the security wing of St Vincent’s. Dennis was never to appear again in court. Less than five weeks later he was dead, at the age of thirty-five.

  The day he died I was in that hospital really early. I don’t know why . . . instinct? Thirteenth of April, thirteen his lucky day? By this stage he’d been in the prison ward at St Vincent’s a few days. And I used to take him in a Serepax, just one. So this night, the night before he died, he said: ‘I don’t want one.’ And that worried me. And I come back real early the next morning. And they were wheeling his bed out. They put him in the St Ann’s Ward.

  He didn’t die in the
prison ward, like most people think, and they had him all hooked up to these monitors, right? So Charlie and Andrew, his lawyers, came in about quarter to six at night, and he said to them: ‘I’m that bloody tired.’ He said: ‘I haven’t been to sleep for days.’ And one of them said: ‘But you go twelve or fourteen days without sleep anyway, Den.’ So with that, they leave.

  Now I had two screws, because he was in custody, and I wanted the confession about who put this heroin in my back yard at number 35 that we were charged with, me and Trevor. So I asked the screws to witness it. I said to him: ‘Dennis, who put that heroin in my backyard?’ He said: ‘That fucking Wayne did.’ Not meaning Stanhope, the other one. Now I got that confession.

  At six o’clock I’m sitting there alone and then all of a sudden as the minutes tick, I could see the monitor going down, and he closed his eyes. And the alarms went off. Well the nurses went to rush in, and I said: ‘You’re not coming in. That’s it. Leave him be.’ I said: ‘To spend the rest of his life in gaol? No.’ So he died officially at five past six. I stopped them from reviving him. He was thirty-five. He died in agony, Dennis.

  And I made him pay while he was dying. I said all I wanted to say to him while he could hear. ‘How do you think I feel?’ And ‘What did you think about when I wanted to kill you, Dennis?’ But he couldn’t answer me back, he was too feeble. But one day I said I was going to kill him, and Jason was there, and his face was white, and I said: ‘I’m going in next door to kill him.’ The kid nearly died. Because I couldn’t see any end to the murders. I had to stop the killings, I’d had enough of the killings. I think it was after Wayne Stanhope’s murder that I’d had enough. I just wanted to kill him.

  Kathy was torn between grief and anger at the realisation that Dennis had been betrayed—particularly by Wayne and Sandy.

  So this Wayne and Sandy had bought him a tile picture made of tiles, called ‘The Family’. As soon as Dennis died I went back to 37 and I got the fucking thing, and I smashed it to smithereens. And young Jason’s watching me. I was in a terrible, terrible temper, and I think it was Victor restrained me. I had to get me anger out.

  Once again the back pages of the Sun were used to express all those feelings that could never be hinted at during Dennis’s life. There were messages from family members, including Gladys and Harry, his brothers, Jade and Lindy, Vicki and Jason. Kim Nelson was there, and his legal representatives, ‘Charlie N., Chris D. and Andrew’. Their message read: ‘Denny, sorry we missed the turn. When we get together again, we’ll get bail down there.’

  A discordant note was struck by four or five notices purporting to come from police officers Brian Murphy and Paul Higgins. Although Higgins’s name was linked with Dennis, it is unlikely either of the two men actually inserted them. Kathy checked and discovered they were lodged by a tattooed man at a Footscray newsagency. Another notice was signed TJF, police slang for an aborted mission—’The Job’s Fucked’.

  Missing from the death notices, almost without exception, were the names of the rich and famous who visited Stephenson Street during Dennis’s reign. They included leading barristers, well-known Catholic priests, a prominent rock star, and on two occasions members of an international cricket side and a visiting American basketball team.

  Father Peter Norden, who did Jamie’s funeral, used to come down the hill jogging, and call in and have a drink with Dennis. Father Brosnan, the chaplain at Pentridge, used to come down quite a fair bit, once a month or something like that. He liked Dennis. Must have had a lot to do with him in gaol. I believe they all went to the chapel, but I don’t think it was just to say prayers. A bit of gossip, a bit of this and a bit of that. Dennis thought he was all right.

  Brosnan gave me $100 for food for Victor and Wendy’s kids when I was looking after them in the early 1990s and I got them crayfish and prawns. Did Dennis believe in God? No, I don’t think so. I think he thought he was God. But I remember one time Father Brosnan was on a special diet, and I had to poach him some fish. He used to eat in 37.

  Father Brosnan’s memory of his relationship with Dennis and the family was not so clear-cut when I interviewed him for this book. Early in the conversation he acknowledged: ‘We got on very well, Dennis and I, we always were good friends.’ But later he amended this to a ‘passing friendship’. Father Brosnan added that he generally found Dennis pleasant, but added: ‘But that was because he could afford to be.’ He never saw Dennis’s violent side, because—’I didn’t see him in action with his mates’.

  He declined to pass any judgment about the way Kathy’s family turned out, other than to say: ‘There were a lot of reasons, the circumstances and the environment they lived in, and Kathy would not have been the greatest example for them. As kids there would have been a lot of confusion in their little minds, and this would have stayed with them.’ Although he couldn’t specifically remember the poached fish, Father Brosnan said: ‘I wouldn’t deny it, though, it would have been quite possible.’

  Among the barristers who visited on occasion were Bob Kent QC and Chris Dane QC, both of whom represented family members. Mr Kent said in an interview for this book that he remembered attending Stephenson Street for conferences with his client. Kathy recalls a few incidents:

  Chris Dane, he was down there in his black coat and striped trousers. He came down over that police surveillance.

  I do remember there was basketballers, black ones. How did he get to know them? How did he get to know a lot of people? The reputation of where to get things. They were huge, they were black, maybe they wanted a smoke. ‘Hey, man, what’s doin’?’ I had the Pakistani one-day cricket team come down to the parlour at 108. I was walking up the street and I noticed the tracksuits going in, about half-a-dozen of them. We used to advertise in the Truth.

  Then there was Stevie Wright from the Easybeats, he was there all the time. Dennis was going to promote him, so Stevie flew down with his books. Dennis must have paid for the ticket. Dennis thought ‘fuck that’ in the end. Before Dennis died Stevie sent him an album to St Vincent’s, a special album, not released normally. During the Bi-centennial in Brisbane he came booming out onto the stage, and the very next day he was down at Stephenson Street. I said: ‘Dennis is dead.’

  Not surprisingly, Dennis’s death became a major media event. The Age, the Sun and the Sunday Press all ran significant stories detailing his drug empire, the killings of which he was suspected and the indignity of his final days. ‘Peaceful death of a violent man’, ‘Dealer avoids justice a final time’, and ‘Death pays a dealer one final call’ were three of the choicest headlines. Kathy also remembers the Channel Ten news crew trying to film the coffin coming out of number 37.

  A few days after Dennis died Kathy made an ill-advised appearance on Derryn Hindi’s 3AW talkback radio program. Hinch understandably wanted to discuss the murders and the drug dealing. Kathy, also understandably, wanted to talk about Dennis’s tragic life, Sissy’s suicide, the birth of his two daughters addicted to heroin, the murder of his brother. There wasn’t much common ground between the two. ‘He’s dead. Can’t you let him rest?’ was Kathy’s final word.

  At the time of his death Dennis was facing more than sixty serious charges ranging from murder to mild misdemeanours. During the last nineteen years of his life he received twenty-six separate terms of imprisonment . . . but spent less than seven years in all behind bars.

  Contrast this with the appalling custodial history of his younger brother Peter. He has been before the courts on only three occasions since the age of nineteen, but has spent all but a few months of the past twenty-one years in prison.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Walsh Street

  KATHY’S DAUGHTER VICKI IS in the witness box in Melbourne’s Supreme Court before Mr Justice Vincent, who is presiding over one of the city’s most celebrated trials of this century. In the dock across the courtroom from Vicki sit four men, including two of her brothers, Victor and Trevor. The four are accused of the coldblooded execution of two
young police officers late one night in a back street of one of Melbourne’s wealthiest suburbs. Along with her seventeen-year-old son Jason, Vicki is giving evidence against Victor and Trevor, helping the prosecution in a case which, if successful, will certainly see them gaoled for the rest of their lives.

  Sitting upstairs in the public gallery is Kathy, looking on in shame and horror at this public destruction of her family. She knows her sons are innocent, but the spectacle of her daughter, her own flesh and blood, playing a leading role in this drama is too much for her. The one principle by which she has always lived, and which she has instilled in her children, is the placing of family loyalty above all else. And here, in open court, Vicki is driving a stake through the heart of that principle. Kathy knows Vicki has been told by police that she must choose between her son Jason and her two brothers. She knows detectives have worked their poison, voicing Vicki’s worst fear, that Victor and Trevor are planning to have Jason murdered if he continues his evidence against them. But to Kathy this is ridiculous—Vicki should know that in a family like theirs, such an act would be unthinkable. Why can’t she see the detectives are seeking only to attack from within? To weaken the family’s strength and resolve from the inside?

  Suddenly Vicki turns and flashes a look of pure, venomous hatred across the courtroom towards the dock. There is no mistaking at whom it is aimed. Victor and Trevor seem almost to wilt before the intensity of their sister’s loathing. Kathy leaps to her feet from the hard wooden bench in the gallery and, tears washing down her face, stumbles down the stairs. It is the last time she will ever set eyes on her daughter.

  The life and crimes of Dennis Allen were undoubtedly the impetus behind the emergence of Kathy Pettingill’s family as the most notorious criminal dynasty in Australian history. Eighteen months after Dennis’s death the involvement of three of her other children, Victor, Trevor and Vicki, her grandson Jason, and Victor’s wife Wendy in events surrounding the Walsh Street murders became the second chapter in the saga of the family’s enduring infamy.