by Justine Ford
‘We wanted to see if there were any other documents relating to Les Girls [the drag nightclub] and about six other businesses he operated, because we wanted to be thorough,’ Ron says, recalling how he was particularly eager to search a storeroom that he knew to be below the shop.
When Ron and Ryan turned up, the ‘short, black-haired and always immaculately dressed’ Saffron was there to greet them, the keys to his storeroom at the ready. ‘It was like a cellar,’ Ron says of the room. ‘The walls would have been forty-five centimetres thick.’
Yet even though Saffron was obliging, there was something disarming about him. ‘He opened the door to the storeroom and Bob Ryan and I walked in. There were no windows in there. In fact, there was nothing in there at all. He’d obviously cleared it out so we couldn’t find anything on him in there.’
As Saffron stood outside the enormous storeroom watching the detectives, Ron became nervous. ‘I looked at Abe who had a big smile on his face and thought, If you want to lock us in here, no one will ever find us,’ he recalls. ‘He was in a position of power because no one would have heard of us again.’
In the end, after an investigation that ran for around seven months and involving six personnel, the NCA had enough dirt to lock Saffron up. But much like the American mobster Al Capone, who was suspected of countless serious crimes, all the authorities could pin on Saffron were tax offences. ‘Ultimately Saffron was done for defrauding the tax department of $10 million, due to the fact that we found out he was operating two sets of books,’ Ron says, acknowledging the pivotal information given by Anderson and Long.
Saffron’s arrest was often talked about in NCA circles later. Mengler, who coordinated the operation from NCA headquarters, remembers it well. ‘The arresting officer said to me, “That’s the first time I’ve arrested someone wearing $50 silk socks and a $5000 suit. They’re usually wearing trackie dacks!” ’ he laughs.
After several unsuccessful appeals, Saffron served seventeen months behind bars, trading in his sharp, designer suits for prison-issue tracksuits. But it was only a temporary comedown. After his release, Saffron went on to live a long, prosperous and dapper life, passing away in 2006, aged eighty-six.
*
After Saffron was charged, Ron and his colleagues started investigating the suspicious 1979 ghost train fire at Sydney’s Luna Park. Seven people – six of them children – had perished in the blaze, which Saffron was suspected of arranging, but the NCA could not prove it. ‘We had information that Saffron wanted Luna Park burnt down so he could obtain the land to build apartments,’ Ron says. ‘The plan was to put petrol through and ignite it and it would have burnt the ghost train and the whole place down. No one knew there would be people in it, but there were several people killed.’
Simultaneously, Ron delved into other cases involving the members of the underworld. ‘Everything I did in the seven months I was in Sydney was straight out of Blue Murder,’ he says, referring to the 1995 ABC mini-series about the controversial detective Roger Rogerson and the violent criminal Arthur ‘Neddy’ Smith. Blue Murder dramatised Rogerson’s 1981 shooting of Neddy Smith’s standover man and drug dealer Warren Lanfranchi. Rogerson claimed it was self-defence and the New South Wales Police later awarded him a bravery medal. (Years later Rogerson’s bravery would come into question, however, when he was charged with the 2014 murder of twenty-year-old university student, Jamie Gao. At the time of writing, Rogerson has pleaded not guilty and has not been convicted.)
In early 1986, an inmate at Sydney’s Long Bay jail offered Ron a different version of the events surrounding Lanfranchi’s death. ‘He claimed to have an eight-millimetre movie of the shooting but said it was locked away,’ Ron says.
What the prisoner told Ron about the content of the film cannot be revealed for legal reasons. For the first time, however, Ron can share this: ‘The prisoner said there was only one other person who knew of the movie’s existence and that was Sallie-Anne Huckstepp.’ Huckstepp was Lanfranchi’s girlfriend, a drug-addicted prostitute who became a whistle-blower after he was shot.
What Ron says next makes him shudder. ‘About a week after the prisoner gave me that information, Sallie-Anne Huckstepp was found in Centennial Park, dead in the lake.’ The thirty-one-year-old had been strangled and drowned. Ron doesn’t know if her death had something to do with the information the inmate had just given him. ‘It may have been a coincidence, or it may have had something to do with the person I spoke to in jail,’ he says. Whatever the reason, he found it deeply unsettling.
*
Even though he’d worked as a homicide investigator, nothing could have prepared Ron for the uneasy world of organised crime in which life was cheap and dangerous secrets were a currency to be traded. ‘At the time, there were a lot of underworld killings in New South Wales that the NCA was investigating,’ Ron says. ‘So all of a sudden we were in the middle of a heavy criminal element.’
It was when Ron started to investigate the unlawful activities of other police that he started to fear for his own safety. ‘It got dangerous,’ he admits, ‘because of some of the people we spoke to about high-level corruption within New South Wales Police. We became a bit of a target because back then it was frowned upon, I suppose, to report police corruption. It got to the point here we had to move from our accommodation every seven or eight days. It was really an insurance policy, to keep moving.’
Despite the pressures of the job, Ron continued to impress Mengler, who was later appointed Victoria’s deputy commissioner. During his own esteemed career, Mengler identified the attributes of a top investigator and says Ron possessed them all, and more. ‘The first attribute is honesty and high moral values,’ he says. ‘The second is a belief in what you do and the third is the ability to deal with facts and not supposition.’ The fourth attribute is the desire to achieve, and the fifth is having enough energy for the job. Mengler says a top investigator also needs compassion and isn’t afraid to show their emotions. ‘You also need a sense of urgency – you can’t put off until tomorrow what you can do today because you can lose evidence,’ he adds.
‘Quite simply,’ Mengler concludes, ‘Ron is an outstanding detective. One of the most outstanding detectives in the last thirty years.’
But after seven months at the NCA coalface, Ron was ready to go home, and asked if he could return to Melbourne to be with his family. He’d been away for a long time. ‘But I needed to get away from that environment of the underworld too, in which people were constantly talking about police involvement in crime and corruption. It was information we had to pass on, but back then the attitude among police was, “Do not hit the beehive with a stick or you will be stung”.’
So before he got stung, Ron packed his bags. ‘Sydney was a fascinating place to work and I met many underworld figures,’ he says. ‘I learnt from being up there that everyone has a secret. There is always a skeleton in the cupboard and if you approached people the right way, they were often happy to tell their story. It was all about listening and understanding.’
And Ron says that’s why, decades later, Mick Long still rings him every year to wish him a merry Christmas.
12
THE MARAFIOTE MURDERS
‘I was privileged to be asked to reinvestigate the disappearance and suspected murder of Dominic Marafiote.’
– Ron Iddles
Rumours of bent cops continued to abound during Ron’s time at the NCA, especially during Queensland’s Fitzgerald Inquiry, which began in 1987 and investigated police misconduct. During that time, Ron arranged to travel to the Gold Coast to meet a whistle-blower, who called in a panic a couple of days later to cancel. ‘I’d made a time to meet him and when I rang to confirm he said, “Don’t come, I’ve had a call from a very senior police officer. He threatened me and told me not to speak to you. If I do, I’ll be signing my own death warrant”.’ Ron left him alone.
While the NC
A continued to delve into police corruption, Ron turned his attention to one final drug case before returning to the Victoria Police Crime Department. It had dawned on him that the new breed of drug dealer had become as dangerous as the crooked police he’d been investigating. Dealers had started using the drugs they were peddling, which made their behaviour unpredictable. ‘You never knew how they were going to react when you caught them,’ Ron says.
At least with old-school crooks, a copper knew where he stood. ‘There was a mutual respect between police officers and old-style crooks,’ he says. ‘Old-school crooks would tell you that in those days, there was honour among thieves. They’d tell you there’s no honour among thieves these days.’
They were eye-opening times and, after his final drug case at the NCA – over which Ron charged a man with possession of four kilos of heroin – he accepted a post as a detective sergeant at the Drug Squad.
But within three months he was back where he really belonged – on secondment to a special taskforce investigating a suspected homicide. The Crime Department needed him to work on a case that involved all the criminal elements he’d come to know so much about at the NCA: drugs, secrets, murder and fear.
It was known as the Marafiote murders.
*
Billy Lees was once a petty criminal who’d be the first to tell you that for someone who’s never had a driver’s licence, he’s stolen an awful lot of cars. Yet, for a small-time crook, there was an honesty about him; his peers might even have said he was old-school. For Billy, car theft was one thing, but murder was a whole other game. So when he found out about the murders of Dominic Marafiote and his parents, Carmelo and Rosa, he didn’t hesitate to tell the police.
On 18 July 1985, Mildura greengrocer Dominic Marafiote went missing and no one could find him. ‘His truck was found on Sixth Avenue, Merbein,’ Ron says, ‘and that led to the property of a man called Sandy MacRae. Police spoke to Sandy MacRae about it in the early days, but he denied any knowledge of Dominic Marafiote’s disappearance.’
The day after Dominic disappeared, his brother found their parents’ bodies in their Adelaide home. They had been shot, execution style. The gunman’s identity was a mystery until two years later, when Lees turned up.
‘It was decided a small group of police should look into his claims,’ Ron says. They quickly realised just how far Lees was prepared to go to help them. ‘He made a statement to us and became a witness, not an informer,’ Ron says. There’s an important difference: ‘Informers do not like their names to be known, whereas Billy was prepared to stand up and be counted, and ultimately, give his evidence in court.
‘Billy Lees said Sandy MacRae had killed Dominic Marafiote, then went to Adelaide to kill his parents,’ Ron continues. ‘When we asked him how he knew that, he said, “Sandy told me”.’
Lees also appeared to have inside knowledge about Rosa Marafiote’s murder. ‘He told us a pillow had been put in front of the muzzle of the gun to muffle it, but when it went off, the hammer of the revolver got caught in the pillowcase,’ Ron says. ‘Billy said, “That’s what Sandy MacRae told me”.’
Ron and a colleague, Detective Senior Constable Brendan Murphy, flew to Adelaide where forensic scientists told them they had found a grease mark on the pillowcase but hadn’t yet been able to explain how it got there. ‘We had it forensically tested and it showed that the killer had put a pillow at the end of the revolver, but that the revolver had got caught on the pillowslip, leaving the grease stain. So the first time the killer fired, the gun didn’t go off.’
It confirmed to Ron and Murphy that Lees indeed had special knowledge of the murders. ‘And that gave us two options to consider: was Billy Lees telling the truth as told to him by Sandy MacRae? Or was Billy Lees the killer? This information could only have been known to the killer or someone present, as it had never been presented to the media,’ Ron says.
With thirteen years of policing behind him, Ron’s gut told him Lees was no killer. ‘When you meet people, you make an assessment,’ he explains. ‘Billy had some criminal history, but I was of the opinion he was telling the truth.’
Ron was right, and Lees offered the police further pivotal information. ‘Billy Lees was of the opinion that Dominic Marafiote was buried on Sandy MacRae’s property,’ Ron says. ‘So we all went up there, a team of forty police, to search for his remains. We executed a search warrant at five in the morning, which took MacRae and his girlfriend, Judy Ip, by surprise.’
Judy Ip was a petite woman whose ex-husband was a partner in Melbourne’s Flower Drum, the city’s most famous fine-dining Chinese restaurant. Her comfortable life changed dramatically after her marriage ended, and she embarked on a relationship with MacRae. It was a deadly partnership because MacRae would eventually force her to become an accessory to murder. ‘She broke down and told me the whole story,’ Ron says. ‘She said, “I made a mistake in my life and that was to answer an ad in the Weekly Times”.’
Alistair ‘Sandy’ MacRae had placed the ad the rural newspaper, seeking a live-in housekeeper and offering attractive benefits. ‘He’d said it was a great environment and that there was water-skiing and wine,’ Ron says. ‘So Judy went up to Merbein, near Mildura, packed up her things in Melbourne, and went and lived in.’
After two bottles of champagne, Ip didn’t clock on as MacRae’s housekeeper, but became his live-in lover. ‘He was a charmer,’ she says in her first ever interview. ‘He could have sold ice to an Eskimo.’ MacRae’s apparent devotion to his family also appealed to Ip, who took her young son with her to Merbein. ‘His [MacRae’s] mother and father and aunty and two sons lived with him on the property too. It was the perfect family life.’
But not for long. No sooner had Ip settled in than her dreams of a happy family, life came crashing down. MacRae let her know who was boss, a bashing or a pistol-whipping his way of keeping her in her place.
‘If I talked back I’d get a belting,’ she reveals. ‘If I was five minutes late coming back from the newsagent’s, it’d be, “You’re late”, whack! That was how it was. He even said to me, “If you leave me, I know where your parents live.’
She didn’t leave.
Ron wasn’t the first detective to ask the diminutive Ip to dish the dirt. South Australian police had already asked for her side of the story, but she didn’t like their tone. ‘I’d like to help you but I know nothing,’ she kept saying.
Ip maintained her line for hours. ‘And then Ron strolls in,’ she says. ‘Just his way and approach, he knew I was an innocent party, so to speak. I just felt I could trust him. And I asked if I could see my son and he arranged that.’
Ron sensed that Ip had something to confess and, if treated respectfully, would probably do so. He could see she was a physical and emotional wreck. ‘She was a small, fragile lady who had been living in fear,’ he explains.
Ron’s straight-up, humane approach quickly yielded a result. ‘Sharpen your pencil, here we go!’ Ip said to Ron. ‘And I gave him a minute-by-minute account of what happened.’
*
Judy Ip told Ron that MacRae had befriended Dominic Marafiote, and had talked the forty-two-year-old into buying a large amount of marijuana from him. It promised to be a money-spinner because Marafiote could sell the marijuana at a tidy profit. The only thing was, the dope didn’t exist; MacRae barely had a couple of wilting plants. ‘He [MacRae] gave him a sample which he took to someone he knew in Shepparton and [after that] he said, “We’ll have twenty tonnes”,’ Ip says.
The pair settled on a price and Marafiote agreed to go to MacRae’s property one night to buy the non-existent marijuana. ‘I said, “But you haven’t got anything [to give him]”,’ Ip reveals. For that she got a whack in the mouth. On the day of the bogus deal MacRae started digging up the yard beneath the chicken shed. It was a sign the night was not going to end well for Dominic Marafiote. MacRae’s strategy, as police later fou
nd out, was to lure Marafiote to his property, kill him and steal the drug money.
But things didn’t go to plan.
When Marafiote arrived in his truck to collect the crop, he spoke to Ip in the kitchen. Then at some stage Marafiote told MacRae he didn’t have the money, which infuriated MacRae. According to Ip, MacRae said, “Dominic, come out and I’ll show you the shit”. He took Marafiote out the back and I thought, What’s he gonna show him?’
Ip wished she could have warned Marafiote that MacRae was dangerous, but they only had a moment alone together. ‘I was even going to say to him, “Get out of here, it’s not good”.’ But she knew Marafiote considered MacRae his friend. ‘He’d say, “But why, what do you mean?” I didn’t have time to be questioned. I only had ten seconds, if anything. I just froze.’
What happened next would change Ip’s life forever – and end Marafiote’s. ‘As I walked out the back I heard a bang and that was it. It was Dominic.’
Ip told Ron the whole, terrible story. ‘Sandy then made Judy take Dominic to the chook yard and bury him,’ he says. Afterwards, MacRae parked Marafiote’s truck on the road to make it look like he’d decided to disappear.
Ip also told Ron that Marafiote had worn a gold chain and crucifix, which she removed after he’d been killed. In a way, it seemed like the right thing to do. ‘When she was confessing to me, Judy said she still had the crucifix and the ring and that they were in her wardrobe, in a coat pocket,’ Ron remembers. ‘We later went back to her home and found the jewellery. There was even an inscription from his wife on the wedding ring, To Dominic with love from Rose.’
Even though Marafiote didn’t have the money, his parents Carmelo and Rosa Marafiote did. Marafiote had planned to drive four hours to the Adelaide suburb of Woodville North to give them the marijuana and they were going to pay him on arrival.