by Justine Ford
Only it wasn’t Marafiote who turned up on his parents’ doorstep that night. ‘Sandy and Judy had an old station wagon which they drove to Adelaide and got there at two or three in the morning,’ Ron says. ‘Carmelo and Rosa were still up as they were expecting to receive the truckload of marijuana from Dominic.’
When MacRae and Ip arrived, MacRae told the Marafiotes that Marafiote was on his way in the truck and that he had come for the money instead. ‘Carmelo wasn’t happy with that, so Sandy insisted they go for a drive, during which they’d see Dominic on the road,’ Ron says. ‘Sandy said, “Once you see the marijuana in the truck, you can pay me”, but of course they didn’t see Dominic because he was already dead.
‘On the way back to the Marafiotes’ house, Judy was driving, Sandy was in the front passenger seat, and sixty-nine-year-old Carmelo was in the back,’ Ron continues. ‘Sandy said, “I’ve looked in the rear vision mirror and Dominic’s behind us now”. Then, just as Carmelo turned around, Sandy shot him in the back of the head.’
When they pulled into the Marafiotes’ driveway, MacRae left Carmelo slumped in the car. Once inside, he demanded the money from seventy-year-old Rosa. ‘Sandy made Rosa kneel down on the floor,’ Ron says. ‘She said, “I don’t have any money”, which was when MacRae got the pillow, and on the second attempt, managed to shoot her through it.’
With no sign of the money in the house, MacRae decided to hit the road. But first there was the business of the body in the back seat. ‘Sandy made Judy go out to the car,’ Ron says. ‘They brought Carmelo in and left him in the house.’
The pair arrived back in Merbein at around 7 am. ‘Sometime later that day, the bodies of Carmelo and Rosa were found and Dominic’s truck was found near Sandy MacRae’s,’ Ron says. The drug money even turned up when the forensic pathologist found $28,000 sewn into the hem of Rosa’s blood-spattered nightdress.
It was a truly cold-blooded crime and the only way Ip could deal with the part she was made to play was by operating on ‘automatic’, and with the help of prescription drugs. ‘After the Marafiotes’ [murder] I came home and got up the next morning as if nothing had happened,’ she says. ‘If he [MacRae] said, “Get up, go and pick the grapes”, that was it.’
Initially, police had thought Marafiote had left his truck on the side of the road in order to stage his own disappearance, just as MacRae had hoped. They also figured that for some unknown reason he’d travelled to Adelaide to murder his parents. ‘But then Judy told us the real story and she took me to the chicken shed to show me where the body was buried.’
Still, Ron had to be certain the body beneath the shed belonged to Marafiote. He could not be identified through fingerprints, and with no DNA in those days, Ron had to find another way. ‘The body had a curvature of the spine so we managed to get an X-ray of Dominic’s spine from Mildura Hospital,’ he says. ‘The pathologist was then able to match the X-ray to the spine, so we knew for sure it was Dominic Marafiote.
‘We charged Sandy MacRae with the murder of Dominic Marafiote and South Australian Police charged him with the murder of Carmelo and Rosa in Adelaide, and we charged Judy Ip with accessory to murder,’ Ron continues, adding that Ip agreed to plead guilty and give evidence against her former lover.
‘After we’d charged them, I said to Brendan Murphy, “Let’s doorknock all the homes in Sixth Avenue in Merbein again”,’ Ron recalls. It was a smart decision, because even though they’d canvassed the neighbours before, the detectives turned up a new witness. ‘One of the houses we doorknocked was a nearby farmhouse and the husband told us he saw Dominic’s truck go into MacRae’s residence then come out, but he’d always been fearful of MacRae so he hadn’t wanted to say anything.’
It helped police establish their timeline of events, and informed the way Ron would guide his teams in future. ‘I’d say, “After you’ve charged someone, go back to the area where you doorknocked or where the suspect lived, because you could turn up more evidence.’
When Ron interviewed MacRae, he found him unlike any murderer he’d met before, and he’d met some shockers. ‘There was something about him,’ Ron says. ‘I’ve always had the view that most people aren’t born bad but they make bad choices, but there was something in his eyes that I thought was creepy and evil. I’d say of all the people I’ve dealt with he’s the sort of person that’d come looking for the person who charged him.’
And that became a very real fear for Ron when he found out MacRae had escaped from Pentridge Prison while on remand. ‘I can remember thinking, I wonder why he’s escaped,’ Ron says. ‘Here was a guy facing three murder charges, so he had nothing to lose. I thought that he might think, If I get rid of the people who charged me, I might get off.’
But that wasn’t the case. ‘He was found in Moonee Ponds sitting on a verandah,’ Ron says. ‘He wanted to say goodbye to his father.’
*
While Ron was preparing his brief for the Marafiote murders, something wonderful happened. On Mothers’ Day in 1988, Colleen gave birth to the couple’s second child, a boy they named Matthew. ‘I’d been trying from when Joanne was eighteen months old,’ Colleen says. ‘So when I found out I was pregnant I was really stoked. I couldn’t believe it after twelve years.’
Ron couldn’t believe it either when he first laid eyes on his son.
‘He was thrilled,’ Colleen recalls. ‘The moment he looked at Matthew I think he ran out and told everyone in the hospital including the cleaner and everyone not related to us!’
‘I was very excited because we’d hoped for another baby for so long,’ Ron says. ‘And then to have a son was fantastic.’
But almost immediately, work beckoned. ‘The day Matthew came home from hospital, I flew to France on the Marafiote murder investigation,’ Ron says. ‘In the back of my mind I thought, I’m doing the wrong thing by not staying at home. On the other hand, it was an opportunity to go overseas to complete an investigation and solve three murders.’ And even though he didn’t want to leave his wife and newborn baby, he knew Colleen would cope. ‘She’s always been very strong and capable,’ he says. ‘Sometimes it’s about balance, but other times it’s about finishing a job you’d started.’
And even though France sounded like a glamorous trip, it was a necessary part of the investigation because Dominic Marafiote’s wife, Rose, was living there. ‘So I went to Avignon in France where I met Rose Marafiote and she identified the ring and the gold chain and crucifix,’ Ron says.
*
Before he left, however, Judy Ip told Ron about another murder. ‘She said Sandy had always been about money and was always scheming, and had killed another man,’ Ron says.
Fifty-nine-year-old Merbein man, Albert O’Hara, known to his friends as Bert, had been hoping to start a boat-building company and, in December 1984, agreed to buy marijuana from Sandy MacRae. If O’Hara sold it on at a good price, perhaps he could open his business ahead of schedule.
But MacRae had other plans. It was like a test run for Marafiote’s murder seven months later. ‘Sandy MacRae lured Albert O’Hara to his property, where he shot and killed him,’ Ron says. MacRae then stole the $10,000 Bert O’Hara had brought with him for the drugs. Ip pointed the police towards where she thought Bert had been buried, but they couldn’t find him.
Ip had yet more to get off her chest. ‘Brendan Murphy had to drive Judy to Fairlea Women’s Prison and on the way she said, “I want to take you somewhere else”.’ Ip asked Murphy to go to a house she’d driven past once with MacRae in Epsom Road, Kensington. ‘There was a front-end loader digging up the footpath and Judy said, “I hope they don’t dig up the backyard”,’ Ron says.
Ip then explained there was a body buried in the backyard and alleged it was more of MacRae’s murderous handiwork. When asked later, MacRae told the police he knew the body was there and even drew a map of where to find it. ‘A body was dug up from Epsom Road and
it was believed to belong to a prostitute,’ Ron says. But MacRae denied having anything to do with the woman’s murder and subsequent investigations failed to prove he’d killed her.
But there was a development in the murder of Bert O’Hara. ‘Sometime later, police got further information about Albert O’Hara and went back to Merbein and located his body,’ Ron says. ‘It was about a hundred metres from where we’d dug. MacRae got charged with that murder.
‘In the end,’ Ron adds, ‘everything that Judy Ip told us was true, and police suspect there were more murders MacRae was involved in – up to seven. But had it not been for the help of Judy Ip and Billy Lees, the Marafiote murders mightn’t have been solved. Ultimately, Sandy MacRae was convicted of the murders of the Marafiotes as well as the murder of Albert O’Hara. He was sentenced to thirty-six years but wanted life. He said something to the judge like, “I never want to get out. I’ll be eighty-five when I’m released, I’ll have nothing to live for out there”,’ Ron says. ‘But in jail at least, he went on to run the music radio station.’
After serving ten months in prison, Judy Ip was released on twelve months’ probation. But Ip would have been happy to stay behind bars because she was no longer being abused. ‘I was happy in there,’ she admits. ‘I could’ve spent the rest of my life in there because I resolved myself to it.’
These days, Ip’s adult son and her work keep her going, but the memories are as vivid as ever. ‘I thought of going to a priest and confessing, but it was too horrific,’ she says. ‘So I just lived with it. I still live with it.’
And Ip – who says MacRae once tried to take out a contract on her life from prison – still lives in fear. ‘I’m still waiting for the hit to come,’ she says. ‘I never thought a person could be possessed by the devil, but he is.’
13
THE SEVENTEEN-YEAR ITCH
‘I know it sounds strange but I just needed to do something different. It’s quite normal for operational police to feel like that, even if they’ve been passionate about policing.’
– Ron Iddles
The way Ron sees it, drug work suits some detectives but he didn’t want to make a career of it. ‘In the end, you were rarely dealing with people. You were dealing with a product rather than a victim or a victim’s family, and that didn’t suit me.’
In late 1988 Ron was promoted to the rank of detective senior sergeant and filled a short-term vacancy at the Licensing, Gaming and Vice Unit where he carried out administrative duties. ‘I wasn’t there for longer than six weeks when I went back to Homicide,’ Ron says.
Returning as a senior sergeant of thirty-four meant that Ron was now running investigations and leading his own crew. One of the men in his charge was his former lecturer and mentor from Detective Training School, John Hill, who was a detective sergeant. Ron says, ‘It was a bit daunting. John Hill was someone I’d always looked up to and now I’d arrived and was his senior sergeant.’
Ron recalls the first call-out they attended together at a house in Murrumbeena, in Melbourne’s south-east. Upon entering the house, they saw a dead woman sitting in a lounge chair. ‘I remember John asking me what I thought, and at that time he was probably far more experienced at homicide investigation than I was,’ Ron admits. ‘In the end we both came to the consensus it was an overdose, not a murder. There was no sign of forced entry and the blood from her mouth was not bright red, which indicated it could have come from her stomach, suggesting an overdose.’ Forensic tests supported the detectives’ theory.
‘Usually it’s the senior sergeant’s decision how to actually handle a case, but I think John respected me as a hard worker and someone who had made their own reputation, so we had a mutual respect for each other,’ Ron adds.
Yet even though Ron was finally leading a team at Homicide, something he had always longed to do, something else was playing on his mind. Something he didn’t see coming.
*
‘I’d been back at Homicide for only three months when I became restless,’ Ron says. ‘Often police officers with around seven to eight years’ experience think about career changes and leave the police force. I don’t think there are many officers who have not thought about it during their career at some time, but it is a big decision to walk away from such a secure job.’
Even though he’d landed his ‘dream job’, he had been an operational police officer since the early 1970s. What would it be like to do something else? he wondered. It was a niggling thought that just wouldn’t go away. ‘In hindsight, I wouldn’t say I was burnt out but I’d never taken any time off from operational work,’ he explains. ‘Others, when they’re promoted, take on a project or something at the Police Academy, but I’d always worked in busy areas.’
These days, Victorian police officers can take twelve months without pay and still keep their jobs, but that wasn’t an option in 1989. ‘Looking back, if that had been available then I would have done that to test the water, to work out whether I really wanted to leave for good,’ Ron says. ‘Decisions are based on the facts at the time and you can always look back and question it. Hindsight is a wonderful thing and deciding to leave was probably not my best decision, but later I became a better police officer for having done something different.’
With the decision made to try something new, Ron had to work out what he wanted to do. Truck driving came to mind. ‘So I started looking into the possibility of becoming an owner–driver because I’d always had a love of machinery,’ he says. ‘And I’d always done something part-time. I’d driven tractors and at one stage I’d delivered meat. So I was looking for a job where I could work on my own as a driver.’
Soon, he heard about a job at Debco, a company that manufactured potting mix. ‘I had an interview with the manager, a bloke called Chris Drysdale, and he said, “Buy yourself a truck and you can start!” ’
Colleen found Ron’s decision to change careers sudden and perplexing, given how much he’d thrived on being a detective. ‘She was probably apprehensive that I was going to leave a secure job I loved, but she didn’t say don’t do it,’ Ron says.
‘It did surprise me at the start but then he explained how he felt,’ Colleen says. ‘I just wanted him to be happy. And that meant doing whatever he wanted to do.’
With two children to feed, Ron was also attracted by an increase in income. ‘The pay rates were very good for an owner–driver,’ he says. ‘You could earn $140,000 a year.’
Drysdale suggested Ron do a two-day trial and hire a twelve-ton truck to deliver potting mix to see how he liked it. There were forty bags to a pallet, which Ron had to unload and stack in nurseries.
‘On my first day I worked around the Melbourne metropolitan area,’ Ron says. ‘On the second day, I delivered potting mix to Yea and Mansfield, out in the country.’ And as hackneyed as the saying might be, you can take the boy out of the country but you can’t take the country out of the boy. ‘I thought, How good is this! I’m out in the country, meeting good people. There’s no stress and no pressure – this is not bad!’
Ron’s next step was to buy a truck of his own. ‘I went to Woods and Reeves [a truck dealership] and bought myself a 1982 T-Line 2670 International truck, a prime mover,’ he says. ‘They had to get the chassis extended and a tray put on it, so all up it cost $60,000.’
Now he had to settle on a start date with Debco. At first, he couldn’t wait but in the month while the truck was being built, he started having second thoughts. ‘I thought, Here I am, about to borrow $60,000. What if I broke my leg and couldn’t drive? What if the truck breaks down? There’s no holiday pay and no sick leave. In the police force I got paid reasonably well, there was six weeks holiday leave a year as well as long service and sick leave. What am I doing?’
To allay his fears, Ron asked other truck owners about their experiences. ‘Fortunately they all said I was well and truly going to get a good return on my investment,’ Ro
n recalls.
But there was still the matter of handing in his resignation at the Homicide Squad. ‘I came in one day at 5 am and put a note on everyone’s desk. I’d personally addressed them to every member, telling them I’d finally made a decision to resign, effective from a particular date.’
To a person, his colleagues were stunned. ‘By eight o’clock when everyone got in they couldn’t believe it,’ Ron says. ‘Then, when they found out I was going to drive a truck, they said I was mad.’
Some even assumed Ron had decided to leave because he’d been subpoenaed to give evidence at a police-board hearing investigating his former Detective Training School classmate, Denis Tanner. Tanner had been suspected of leaking information from Operation Mint, an amphetamine job Ron had worked on while he was at the Drug Squad. Tanner was cleared of any wrongdoing. ‘My decision to leave had nothing to do with that whatsoever,’ Ron says. ‘It was just a rumour that some people latched on to.’
A supervisor promptly tried to talk Ron out of his decision. After all, he was regarded as one of the force’s top detectives. ‘But I was committed financially,’ Ron says. ‘The only way out at that point was to sell the truck. I’d made my decision and I stuck by it.’
*
On Ron’s first day as a full-time driver, he met two amiable fellow drivers whom he talked to about the job. But there’s no time for idle chatter in the trucking game. ‘You won’t earn money that way,’ one of the truckies warned. ‘Get that forklift, put twelve pallets on it and off you go.’
Ron delivered the potting mix to nurseries around town, where he unloaded it by hand. He was such a fast worker that he was soon earning $2500 a week.
Regulation truckie wear might have been shorts and a t-shirt, but Ron maintained his own functional sense of style. He’d come from Homicide after all, which other units referred to as the Gucci Squad because they dressed so well. ‘I was the first driver they’d ever seen with a briefcase, in brown leather, with a street directory in it. The other blokes used to laugh at me for having it,’ Ron says.