by Justine Ford
About The Good Cop
‘A – Assume nothing. B – Believe nothing. C – Check Everything.’
In an incredible twenty-five-year career as a homicide detective, Ron Iddles’ conviction rate was 99%. Yet that only partly explains why Iddles is known to cops and crims alike as ‘The Great Man’.
Tough, inventive and incorruptible, stoic in the face of senseless horror yet unafraid to shed tears for a victim, Ron has applied his country cunning and city savvy to over 320 homicide cases – some of them the most infamous, compelling and controversial crimes in the nation’s history. To the victims of crime, Ron is both a shoulder to cry on and an avenging angel.
Ron Iddles never gave up on a ‘lost’ cause. He became a regular on the nightly news – the dogged face of Australian justice. Working long hours dodging bullets, chasing leads and outwitting killers, Ron would tell his teams: ‘The answer is just one call away’. And in 2015, that belief saw him crack Victoria’s oldest unsolved homicide, yet another remarkable feat in a life devoted to keeping the public safe.
This is the extraordinary inside story of a real crime crusader. Ron Iddles. The Good Cop.
CONTENTS
Cover
About The Good Cop
Dedication
Ron’s Police Force Timeline
Foreword
Prologue
Chapter 1: The Boy from the Bush
Chapter 2: The Big Smoke
Chapter 3: The Thief Catcher
Chapter 4: The New Detective
Chapter 5: Welcome to the Brotherhood
Chapter 6: Open for Business
Chapter 7: ’Tis the Season
Chapter 8: No Hard Feelings
Chapter 9: St Kilda
Chapter 10: Saving Louise
Chapter 11: The Original Mr Sin
Chapter 12: The Marafiote Murders
Chapter 13: The Seventeen-year Itch
Chapter 14: Homicide – Take Two
Chapter 15: The Monster Inside
Chapter 16: Jane Thurgood-Dove
Chapter 17: Crime-Busting Driver
Chapter 18: Tales from the Underworld
Chapter 19: Righting a Wrong
Chapter 20: Murder at the Mall
Chapter 21: Double Murder at Sand Bar Number Two
Chapter 22: The Answer’s in the File
Chapter 23: Peter Rule’s Terrible End
Chapter 24: The Iddles Effect: Connect
Chapter 25: No Looking Back
Chapter 26: Steering the Ship
Images
Acknowledgements
Disclaimer and contact information
About Justine Ford
Also by Justine Ford
Copyright page
Dedicated to my amazing wife Colleen and our three children, Joanne, Matthew and Shae.
I know there were many special times in your life when I was not there, moments or events I will never experience. Without your total support I could never have done and achieved what I did as a homicide investigator over twenty-five years.
The community will ever be grateful for the sacrifice you made.
This book is for you and the grandchildren.
– Ron Iddles
To Carmel and Carol, for making so much possible.
And to Ron Iddles, for tirelessly helping so many.
– Justine Ford
RON’S POLICE FORCE TIMELINE
1973
Joined the Victoria Police
1980
Started at the Homicide Squad
1983
Completed Sergeants Course
1985
Seconded to the National Crime Authority (NCA)
1986
Awarded Chief Commissioner’s Certificate for Bravery and Courage on Arrest on 29 May 1984
1987–88
Seconded to the Drug Squad
1989
Returned to the Homicide Squad
1989
Resigned from Victoria Police
1994
Rejoined Victoria Police and returned to the Homicide Squad
1999
Awarded the Blue Ribbon Foundation Angela Taylor Scholarship to study Criminal Profiling and Serial Killers at the FBI Academy, USA
2001
Awarded the Australian Police Medal (APM)
2007
Awarded Certificate of Recognition by Victoria Police for Subject Matter Expertise in Suspicious Death Investigations
2008
Awarded the Chief Commissioner’s Ethical Leadership Certificate
2010
Awarded Commendation for Investigation into the Murder of Erwin Kastenberger on 8 March 2005
2012
Awarded Policeman of the Year by the Blue Ribbon Foundation
2012
Awarded the Mick Miller Detective of the Year
2014
Finished at the Homicide Squad
2014
Appointed Secretary of the Police Association Victoria
2015
Awarded Order of Australia Medal (OAM)
FOREWORD
It wasn’t a great beginning for the new homicide detective who would go on to become a legendary murder investigator.
It was June 1980 when Ron Iddles stepped into a Thornbury bookshop where owner Maria James had been stabbed sixty-seven times in a frenzied attack that remains unsolved to this day.
It was to be one of the few cases that Ron Iddles would leave as an open file in 2014 when he finally stepped aside from the Homicide Squad to become Secretary of the Victoria Police Association.
When he walked away a veteran senior sergeant he had investigated over 300 murders and checked hundreds more suspicious deaths. He left with a Bradman-like success rate of around 99 per cent.
In a business where detectives can easily become hardened to human tragedy Ron Iddles remained passionate, emotional and committed. Physically brave and mentally tough, he is brought to tears recalling some of the tragedies he has encountered.
While Ron had the brains, the dedication and the energy to become a first-class investigator, he also had the essential emotion needed to be a murder cop – empathy. The ability to relate to the victim he would know only after death, the family devastated by their unspeakable loss, and importantly, the ability to understand why the offender chose to kill.
By building a relationship with murderers, Ron was able to take them on a journey that began with trust and ended with a confession.
‘Most are not bad people, they have just made bad choices,’ he says.
His refusal to condemn killers has fostered unique relationships with some suspects. When one was released after nearly twenty years, his first call was to Iddles – to thank him. ‘He said he was spiralling out of control and was never going to stop committing crime until he was caught. He says he is determined to take his second chance now.’
Ron’s methodical style meant th
at, when he laid charges, they tended to stick. He lost only three Supreme Court cases and each time went to the dock to shake hands with the man he believed had got away with murder. Each time he gave the same piece of advice: ‘You have just copped the biggest break you will ever get, so take advantage of it.’
It was a long way from the lounge room of the family dairy farm near Echuca where as a schoolboy he would sit and watch episodes of the TV drama Homicide.
In drama, the police managed to solve a murder in sixty minutes. In the reality it could take decades.
A few years ago Ron asked me to join him for a charity fundraiser in Echuca – for years he has quietly raised a small fortune for good causes around the state.
On the way he said we would be meeting Tammy Mills, a Shepparton News reporter who had persuaded him to open a local cold case homicide investigation.
It was the murder of Michelle Buckingham, sixteen, who disappeared in October 1983. She was last seen walking towards the Strayleaves Caravan Park on 21 October. Like Maria James, she had been stabbed repeatedly without obvious motive.
Mills’ idea was to bombard Shepparton with the story in the hope that someone with inside knowledge would finally come forward.
It was a million-to-one chance but sometimes long-shots actually win.
‘I kept telling her we didn’t have the staff or resources to work on it but she kept calling me and kept asking questions. Eventually I agreed to reopen the case, and that if she wrote about it, any leads would be followed up,’ he says.
And she did, writing a comprehensive series for the Shepparton News in August 2012 that covered the murder, the initial investigation and the aftermath.
Police received thirty tips, but only one intrigued Ron. It was from a man who agreed to meet the veteran detective at the Shepparton East Football Club ground. His name was Norman Gribble and he would tell Ron the secret he had kept for decades.
Someone he knew had confessed to the murder and that someone was his brother-in-law, Stephen Bradley.
In May 2014, Bradley was charged, extradited from Brisbane and eventually committed for trial.
In 2015, no longer a homicide squad detective, Ron gave evidence in a Supreme Court murder trial for the last time. Bradley was convicted and more than thirty-two years after Michelle was stabbed to death he was sentenced to twenty-seven years with a minimum of twenty-one.
While Ron’s first case remains unsolved, he had the satisfaction of closing his last.
The true crime bookshelves are filled with stories about the worst people in our society. And so Justine Ford’s profile on one of the best is a welcome and refreshing addition.
John Silvester
Senior Crime Reporter
The Age
PROLOGUE
In a career at the Homicide Squad spanning twenty-five years, Ron Iddles has investigated about 320 murders, with a 99 per cent clear-up rate.
Tonight he is talking to a packed auditorium in Essendon about the 1983 stabbing murder of Shepparton teenager Michelle Buckingham, a case that has taken the Homicide Squad until 2015 to finally solve. He explains that while some murderers are locked up within hours, other cases can take years to crack. Ron has been doing these talks since his early days in the force, discussing crime and its effects to members of the public. Any entry fees are donated to charity. He has never accepted a cent.
Ron always plays to full houses; some in the audience tonight haven’t missed one of his talks in a decade. Tonight, he walks on stage to thunderous applause. Then silence. No one wants to miss a word.
The audience hears the fine details of how the celebrated detective closed in on a man he’d accused of the sixteen-year-old’s murder. Ron’s PowerPoint presentation shows photos of police in the scrub at the crime scene, and a video of Ron interviewing a suspect. It is edge-of-the-seat stuff, a gripping way to spend forty minutes. Will the suspect confess?
Ron sees these engagements as an opportunity to educate the public about important issues such as violence against women, family violence, and the overwhelming need in today’s society to keep each other safe. His charity work – for which he has raised $1.5 million – would see him recognised with one of the nation’s highest awards, an Order of Australia Medal in 2015.
It was also one of these talks that would see him out the door of his beloved Homicide Squad.
*
It all began in 1980. One of the parents on his daughter Joanne’s school council asked Ron if he would talk to the school about drugs. Who better to talk about drugs than an officer who had worked the junk-riddled streets of St Kilda? Convinced that his talk might educate others, Ron decided to give it a go.
While he was used to giving evidence in court, addressing a group of mums, dads and grandparents was a new experience. ‘I was probably fairly nervous and I had a lot of notes,’ he says. ‘I got asked a lot of questions and noticed that people have a fascination for police work.’
A few months later, another Neighbourhood Watch group asked him to talk about his role as a homicide investigator, having heard about his noteworthy speech at the school.
For that talk, he presented an in-depth case study during which he discussed clues found at the crime scene, the investigation and the judicial process. Ron also took along a booklet of crime-scene photos but warned the audience about its graphic content.
‘I said, “You don’t have to look at the pictures of the person who’s been shot”,’ he recalls, but everyone wanted a gander. ‘People were intrigued to see the photos but I didn’t go so far as to show them the post-mortem pictures. Even though it was what I dealt with every day at Homicide and was part of my life, I probably didn’t appreciate that many people haven’t seen a dead body.’
After that, word kept spreading. Probus groups began asking Ron to speak to their members. Word of mouth travelled a long way and he was soon a regular on the state’s speaking circuit.
‘In the end I saw it as a good community thing, and it gave people a good sense of what you did as a homicide investigator,’ he says.
At the end of each presentation, Ron always gave the audience something to ponder. ‘I have given you the facts of the case,’ he would say. ‘You’re the jury. It’s up to you to determine what happened. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, now you are to go and consider your verdict.’
Generally, they did it over tea and light refreshments.
Until he first left the police force in 1989, Ron found himself addressing around ten groups a year. The number of engagements doubled after his return to the job in 1994, when he was asked to speak to at least twenty groups a year, including Rotary and Lions clubs. By this time his presentations were even more dynamic.
‘Technology had changed by then, so we had audiovisual recordings of interviews with suspects,’ he says. ‘People wanted to be immersed in the investigation process from start to finish and they were fascinated to hear a suspect saying, “This was what I did”.’
Ron also showed clips from the television news, photos of exhibits and, sometimes, footage of the offender being arrested. ‘There were numerous TV shows about homicide and police investigations but this was taking people into the real world of a homicide investigator,’ he says. Ron was a one-man show connecting police with the public, which explains why a growing number of senior police endorsed his presentations. Arguably more interesting than a night at the flicks, the requests for Ron Iddles the public speaker kept pouring in.
As time went by, he became known as a man with a message.
‘We are caught up in the fastest-paced world we have ever seen,’ he’d say. ‘We are going like a missile out of control, but sadly it is a world you and I helped create. Maybe it’s time to put the handbrake on. Maybe it’s time to start a conversation. Maybe it’s time to engage. I’m not asking you to go home on a Sunday night and sing “Kumbaya” and hold hands. But
, I am saying, look after each other.’
In a homicide context, Ron explained that the combination of lust, greed and revenge produced a fertile environment for murder. He had seen it so many times – people resorting to violence when they could have resolved their problems with words.
Ron had created such a buzz on the public-speaking circuit that the Blue Ribbon Foundation established ‘Insight’ nights, at which detectives demystified their work to members of the general public. Eighty-five people came to the inaugural Insight night. They told their friends, and the next year 180 people came, followed by 250 the year after. Any money raised went to a local hospital to purchase equipment and, according to Ron, ‘The events were also in memory of police officers who had died, so it was a good cause all round.’
Ron was so popular he could have charged thousands of dollars for his services but, for him, it was all about educating people about his job and serving the community. Everyone who came to these nights knew they were getting stories about real-life murders and their solution and the events were clearly billed as such. In thirty years he’d never had one complaint. But times were changing.
*
As one of the highest profile cops in Victoria, Ron could easily have worked his way to the top of the organisation, but he wanted to solve murders, and he couldn’t do that from behind a desk. It troubled him that all his fellow senior sergeants had left the Homicide Squad due to a controversial rotation policy. ‘In late 2009, after what was known as the “Boston” review of the Crime Department, Charlie Bezzina and Lucio Rovis were moved. In the end they both took sick leave due to stress and never returned,’ Ron says. In 2010, Rowland Legg was rotated and he too ultimately resigned. ‘Then in 2011 Jeff Maher decided to leave rather than be pushed out the door. He went to the Arson Squad and retired in 2016.’ With decades of specialist experience gone, they were grim days for what was once considered Victoria’s most elite squad.