The Good Cop

by Justine Ford

  ‘The whole library was going. The last encyclopaedia was Ron,’ says former Homicide detective Allan Birch, who hoped Ron would be spared after winning the 2012 Mick Miller Detective of the Year award. ‘We couldn’t lose him. That would be devastating.’

  But you can’t fight City Hall – or police policy gone mad. Ron Iddles was the last man standing. How long could he avoid the dreaded rotation? And if he did leave Homicide, where would he go? When the secretary of the Police Association of Victoria, Greg Davies, announced his resignation in September 2013, several officers suggested Ron apply for the role.

  ‘I thought about it as the possible next chapter of my life, and the final one of my full-time working life,’ Ron says. ‘I asked myself if I could make a difference, and the answer was yes.’

  So he applied for the job. It wasn’t a lay-down misère that he would get it, and it was possible he might be permitted to stay at Homicide for another couple of years.

  He was, after all, their top cop and prior to being honoured as Detective of the Year had been awarded the Australian Police Medal and Policeman of the Year. Victoria Police had recognised him for his expertise in suspicious death investigations and he had received a Chief Commissioner’s commendation for ethical leadership. The longest-serving detective at the squad, he was at the height of his investigative powers and had no real desire to leave. He just hoped he would have the choice.

  *

  On Friday, 15 November 2013, Ron and his wife Colleen drove to Bendigo for the Biggest Blokes Lunch – an event to raise money for prostate cancer – at which Ron was keynote speaker.

  ‘Ron started his talk and at the very beginning he made the point that some people might be offended or upset by the graphic nature of some of the pictures, so they could either look away or come and discuss their concerns with him after his presentation,’ says organiser and MC Keith Sutherland.

  ‘You may see some photos,’ Ron clearly warned. ‘I’m not asking anyone to look at them.’

  As usual, no one budged. Ron also asked any members of the media present that evening to identify themselves so he could make sure they understood the context of the presentation, that it was insight into a homicide investigator’s work, the same kind of lecture he had been giving for years.

  ‘The audience knew he wasn’t there to bake cupcakes!’ Ron’s wife Colleen says.

  For more than an hour Ron gave a speech themed around the need to look after each other. ‘I spoke about a whole range of social issues that impact on us in society, and how some of those issues – depression, alcohol and drugs – often cause homicides,’ he says.

  ‘Ron’s very clear message was to “look after your mates”, and if anyone missed that point they clearly did not understand what the presentation was about,’ Keith says. ‘It was not about dead bodies or graphic photos.’

  Rather, it was about how there can be tragic consequences if people don’t take care of each other. Keith adds, ‘Ron went on to highlight some cases where people were looking for help and their friends missed some of the triggers.’

  Ron’s short case study was the high-profile murder of Irish woman Jill Meagher. On 22 September 2012, serial sex offender Adrian Bayley abducted the 29-year-old ABC employee from the inner Melbourne suburb of Brunswick, before raping and strangling her to death. It was a crime that outraged the nation, including Ron, whose speeches invariably turned to society’s need to better protect women. On this occasion his message was particularly apt as it was White Ribbon Day, a day to raise awareness about preventing violence against women.

  Ron acknowledged the only person responsible for the crime was Bayley, but again urged the audience to take care of each other, especially when they go out for a few drinks. ‘Jill had a very high blood alcohol reading, something like 0.230,’ he told the audience. ‘If young people are going to go out and drink, you’ve got to look after each other.’

  During the case study, Ron showed a photo of Jill Meagher’s obscured, partially clad body in a shallow grave. It was on screen for less than two seconds. Blink and you’d miss it.

  ‘His message was: if you go out drinking with your friends, make sure you get each other home, and do not go alone as there are predators out there waiting to take advantage of your vulnerability,’ Keith says.

  It was a powerful speech, and one Ron hoped would inspire those who had heard it.

  ‘That was fantastic,’ Keith said to Ron when he walked offstage. ‘You could have heard a pin drop.’

  Ron then took his seat next to a local councillor, who said to him, ‘ “That is the best presentation I’ve ever seen”.’ Ron felt satisfied his important safety message was well received by yet another respected community member.

  *

  About the same time as the Jill Meagher talk, Ron was scrutinising evidence in the unsolved case of Michelle Buckingham, alerted to the unsolved murder by reporter Tammy Mills from the Shepparton News. After Tammy wrote a story about the case, a man came forward with crucial information, enabling Ron to identify a suspect named Stephen James Bradley. He took Bradley in for questioning in Brisbane on Tuesday, 27 November 2013.

  As he was taking Bradley to the Queensland Police Homicide Squad office, his mobile phone rang. It was a staff member from the Victoria Police Media Unit asking if Ron had shown a photo of Jill Meagher at a fundraiser. The staffer told him someone had tipped off the Herald Sun.

  ‘He said they’re going to run a story about it on the front page, saying how insensitive it was,’ Ron recalls.

  Ron was mystified because no one had complained about the photo to him. What am I going to do? he wondered. I’ve done nothing wrong.

  ‘I’m pretty sure I said, “I don’t think you get it”,’ Ron recalls, adding that he was outraged and speaking in a raised voice while Bradley sat next to him in the police car. ‘I said, “I’ve given my time as a public speaker for more than twenty years and have raised one and a half million dollars for charities, and I can tell you, I ain’t done anything wrong!” ’

  Aware that he was uncharacteristically flustered in front of a suspect, he turned to Bradley and said, ‘“It’s all right, Steve. I’m a bit pissed off and a bit upset but I’m not going to treat you that way”.’

  Ron knew he had to stay focused on the interview with Bradley. He did, but it wasn’t easy. Afterwards, he called the media officer, who told Ron he didn’t think they could stop the story running. Ron says, ‘But no one from the Herald Sun had the decency to ring me! It was a disgrace. I then told my inspector he could go to my desk, find my PowerPoint presentation and make an assessment himself.’

  It was unknown who had complained; no one had had a bad word to say on the night.

  Later, in his hotel room, Ron phoned Colleen to tell her the bad news, warning her that the story about his talk would be plastered all over the front page of the paper tomorrow. ‘Batten down the hatches,’ he told her.

  Colleen was mortified, but what made matters worse was that Ron was still interstate and she couldn’t comfort him in person. ‘I just felt sad for him,’ she says. ‘It was going to detract from all the good he’d done for other people. I felt this was the thing people would remember him for.’

  Ron said a superior at Victoria Police told him that showing the photo probably hadn’t been appropriate. Certain he had not acted improperly, Ron rang the assistant commissioner to reiterate he’d done nothing wrong.

  ‘Are you going to throw me under the bus?’ he asked.

  ‘He said, “No, we’ll say you are a great detective and have done a lot of good work, but this was an error of judgement and we need to publicly apologise”.’

  Next, Ron rang George and Edith McKeon, Jill Meagher’s parents. Members of his crew had investigated Meagher’s death and Ron had met her family in court. The McKeons had stayed in contact with Ron after the murder trial and knew he was a public sp
eaker and fundraiser. The first they’d heard of the incident was when a media officer from Victoria Police phoned them to say one of their members had done something dreadful, without explaining who was responsible or the context. All they said was a policeman had shown a naked photo of their daughter in a talk.

  Ron told the McKeons the whole story.

  ‘George said, “If I’d been told it was you, I’d have said there was not a problem”,’ Ron recalls. ‘I said, “Can you tell [Jill’s widower] Tom?” And I got a message back to say he supported me.’

  George also offered to call the newspaper, hoping he could stop the press.

  Ron didn’t sleep at all that night.

  At 5.45 am, he couldn’t help checking his mobile phone, and there it was, the front page of the newspaper screaming at him: Top Cop’s Jill Insult.

  Ron was gutted – and angry. ‘For the journalists not to call me was nothing short of disgraceful,’ he says. ‘I was aware the story would cause huge television and radio coverage and this would impact on my family.’

  Every major television station in the country ran the story, and in Melbourne, the Jill Meagher photo was the only subject being discussed on talkback radio.

  ‘Neil Mitchell [from 3AW] said I’d done it in poor taste; that he didn’t know what I was thinking and that I was a disgrace,’ Ron says. But Mitchell’s listeners were taking Ron’s side. ‘They said things like, “I heard Ron Iddles speak at a fundraiser. I’ve seen the photos. There’s nothing offensive about what he does. He’s giving a community message”.’

  Colleen noticed that no one was complaining about the photos of other victims Ron had used before, even though, in the context of the other images, Jill’s photo wasn’t nearly as graphic. ‘She was seven-eighths buried under dirt. You couldn’t see anything really,’ Colleen says. But Jill Meagher was big news. Her opportunistic abduction and murder had so shocked the community that it prompted ten thousand people to march down Sydney Road in Brunswick demanding an end to violence against women. The case continued to fascinate, and every newspaper knew it.

  At 10 am Ron learnt that Victoria Police was going to hold a media conference without him. ‘My argument was, “Don’t I get a right of reply?” ’

  As news spread, Ron was inundated with calls, especially after the premier, Denis Napthine, was doorstopped and described Ron’s use of the photo as ‘sickening’. But the premier was not expressing the views of his colleagues. ‘My phone went berserk,’ Ron says, ‘I had senior members of the Liberal Party ring and say, “I don’t know why he said that”.’

  All the Herald Sun crime reporters called Ron too. ‘They said they were not part of the story. They had tried to stop it and didn’t want to be a part of it,’ he says.

  The crime writers had told their superiors that Ron was a good contact who always made himself available to them. Their pleas not to burn him fell on deaf ears.

  At around 10.15 am, Victoria Police called Ron again. They had decided he could speak to the media. ‘But they put me in an awkward position because they were apologising. I said, “You don’t need to apologise because I’ve got the support of Jill’s family”.’

  Colleen, who knew Ron was exhausted, was firmly against her husband appearing on television. ‘I just had a bad feeling about it,’ she says.

  Ron’s media conference was scheduled for 11.30 am at Brisbane’s Police Headquarters.

  ‘I hadn’t slept in thirty hours. I looked like shit,’ he says.

  The only consolation was that two of his faithful crew members, Detective Sergeant Allan Birch and Detective Senior Constable Paul Bubb, were sitting in the back of the room to support him.

  As the cameras rolled and snapped, Ron looked drained. ‘I said in no way did I want to demean her,’ he recalls. ‘I said that the people who are making the judgements weren’t there. I said I was trying to make good out of bad.’

  Colleen remembers the broadcast well. ‘Ron wanted to show people he didn’t need to make an apology because he had the approval of Jill Meagher’s family,’ she says. ‘He believed he was a tall poppy and people were out to get him.’

  Later that day, Ron flew back to Melbourne.

  ‘I was really sad that night because it affected the whole family,’ Colleen says. ‘I couldn’t go into work for about two days because I was traumatised by what my husband had been subjected to. I felt so sorry for him. He didn’t deserve it. I knew how hard he had worked for the victims’ families.’

  Ron’s adult children, Jo, Matt and Shae were also bombarded by people asking about their dad.

  By the next morning, as Ron drove to work, Neil Mitchell had had a change of heart and said he had got it wrong, telling his audience that he had received about 320 emails overnight, all supporting Ron. Newspaper reporters who knew Ron also showed their support for him in print.

  But the fallout wasn’t over. Victoria Police announced that all police public-speaking engagements were suspended until they could put an appropriate policy in place.

  Veteran fundraiser Keith Sutherland stood by Ron on television, in the newspaper and on radio, reiterating that Ron had been trying to deliver a message about looking after your mates, but the media weren’t interested in that.

  Fortunately, Ron’s support from the community never waned, and Keith invited him back to address another fundraiser the following year. When Ron took to the stage, four hundred men gave him a standing ovation.

  1

  THE BOY FROM THE BUSH

  ‘Growing up in the country gave me values, shaped my character and gave me a work ethic. And watching the TV show, Homicide, made me think, I want to be a policeman.’

  – Ron Iddles

  The fifties in Australia were a time of great opportunity and prosperity. After the hard years of the Depression and two world wars, there was optimism in the air and stability in the leadership of Prime Minister Robert Menzies. New businesses were set up and many flourished, not just in the city but in country towns like Rochester, near Echuca in northern Victoria.

  Many returned soldiers from World War Two settled in the area on 100-acre farms known as ‘soldier settlement blocks’, financed by government loans. Often they became dairy farmers, who drove into Rochester’s town centre once a week for supplies.

  There were five pubs in town, three butchers, two bakeries, a fruit shop, a newsagent, two stock and station agents, and three supermarkets, one which sold groceries on one side, and clothing and drapery on the other.

  Pride of place in the main street was Iddles Brothers Shoe Store, a few minutes’ walk from Woodlands’ Garage, one of several petrol stations in the thriving little town.

  With a population of just over two thousand people, Rochester was the kind of place where most of the locals knew each other, so it was no surprise when the Iddles family met the Woodlands.

  *

  Good with numbers, Phyllis Woodland worked as one of the first female tellers at the Union Bank after she finished school. Phyllis had lived in Rochester all her life and her brothers owned Woodlands’ Garage. Airman Bill Iddles had ridden his bike past Woodlands’ countless times, but didn’t meet the mechanics’ sister until he was introduced to her at a Christian youth group.

  Phyllis had three other admirers at the time – a pilot, a banker, and a farmer – but Bill’s sense of humour won her over. ‘He used to throw pebbles at the window of the Union Bank to get her attention,’ says Ron’s sister, Nancye Lees. ‘He would play jokes and she was always happy, laughing.’

  In May 1950, after a three-year year courtship, twenty-three-year-old Bill Iddles, and twenty-six-year-old Phyllis Woodland tied the knot. They honeymooned at a guesthouse in rural Ferntree Gully, which is now one of Melbourne’s outer suburbs. ‘After they got married, she left the bank and Dad started driving a bus from Rochester to Melbourne,’ Ron says. ‘It was a passenger service that would
leave at seven in the morning, get to Melbourne at eleven, then return home at night.’

  After a while, Bill quit driving buses and took a job as a mechanic at Woodlands’ Garage. He was a man from the land however, and left a short time later to work as a share farmer on a nearby sheep and wheat property. The Iddles family – along with Bill’s widowed dad, Bill Iddles Senior (better known as Pop) – lived in a weatherboard house with an enormous backyard in Rochester.

  Two years after getting married, their first child, Nancye, was born in 1952, followed by non-identical twins Ronald and Barry Iddles (both eight pounds four ounces) at Rochester War Memorial Hospital on 10 March 1955.

  Shortly after the twins were born, the nurses asked Phyllis what she wanted to call them.

  ‘Mum said, “Iddles is a terrible name to put anything with”,’ says Nancye. ‘ “My initial is P. for Phyllis, and my husband’s is W. for William, which makes us sound like Piddles and Widdles.” ’ Amused, the hospital staff decided to call the babies Piddles and Widdles while they waited for their real names. When Ron was named, his first initial and surname spelled out, appropriately, Riddles – of which he would solve many.

  Although Phyllis used to dress them in identical clothes, Ron and Barry had very different characters from an early age, as their sister Nancye confirms.

  ‘Ron was always outgoing and interested in anything that was going on. He was the stronger of the twins because Barry had a health condition, so Ron was more active.’

  A cyst on Barry’s throat was diagnosed when he was eighteen months old, and he had his first operation a year later. After that, his mum took him to a Chinese herbalist who treated him with a foul-smelling black poultice, then he referred Barry to a plastic surgeon who removed his hyoid bone when he was nine. For two weeks after the surgery, Phyllis stayed with the younger twin in hospital. It was a worrying time for the whole family, especially for Ron and Nancye, who wrote him a ‘get-well’ letter on a brown paper bag.