by Justine Ford
While the investigators looked more closely at the chatty policeman, Ron arranged an extensive canvass of Niddrie. Ever-conscious that a good old-fashioned doorknock was the best way to turn up leads, he and his team rapped on around eight hundred doors, asking residents if they’d seen anything unusual around the time of Jane’s murder. ‘We found out the car that had been used on the day of the murder had been seen in the street on the weekend before the murder, at around 12.30 on the Tuesday morning,’ Ron says. That was two days before Jane was gunned down. ‘The passenger had scraggly hair and was smoking a cigarette.’
Locals had also seen the car outside the children’s school. ‘Another witness also saw the car in Keilor Road in Niddrie,’ Ron says. ‘The witness noticed the numberplate with the letters DKU and remembered it because she’d thought, That was the university I went to overseas.’ And yet another witness saw the car on the day of the murder. ‘At about 6 am it was parked opposite Muriel Street,’ Ron says. ‘When Mark went to work it was there, directly opposite in a side street. Quite clearly someone was watching Jane’s movements.’
Another witness, who lived in Ryder Street, Niddrie, where the getaway car was later found burnt out, told the detectives he’d seen the vehicle there around 10.30 am on the day of Thurgood-Dove’s murder. ‘No one was in it,’ Ron says, ‘and it moved sometime after two o’clock. So we basically had the movements of the car from when it was stolen to when it was burnt out.’ He adds that sometimes when the car was seen there were two men in it, at other times, just one.
But who were they? And what was this all about?
*
Ron had a saying, ‘The answer’s in the file’.
He meant that the key to an investigation – and sometimes, the murderer’s name – could be found in the original police file, in the information collected early on. Ron went back and looked closely at every detail gathered in the immediate wake of Thurgood-Dove’s murder.
‘The first information report suggested Jane’s murder could have been a case of mistaken identity,’ he says, that the bullets might have been meant for another resident of Muriel Street, who lived further down the street with her husband. ‘The husband was known to the police and in the years prior to 1997 he had defrauded a man,’ Ron says. ‘That man subsequently wanted to kill him and engaged a hitman to do so.’ But the plan had backfired. ‘The hitman he hired was actually an undercover cop and the man who tried to hire him was ultimately charged with incitement to murder and did a short time in prison. Could this have been meant as a payback for incitement to murder? When questioned, he told police he knew nothing about the murder.
However, this did set Ron to considering the similarities between the women, and he realised a gunman could indeed have mistaken them. ‘They both lived three driveways from a corner,’ Ron remarks, adding that the shooter could possibly have gone to the wrong house. Not only that, but both women were around the same age and had fair hair. ‘So we went and saw her husband and said, “Was it possible this was meant for you or your wife?” ’ Ron recalls. ‘He was very polite and told us to get fucked.’
Ron went back to the drawing board.
The doorknock also revealed that a young man had heard a fiery argument at the Thurgood-Doves’ place. ‘He was about nineteen and he lived in a caravan in his mum’s backyard, and the fence adjoined the Thurgood-Doves,’ Ron explains. ‘On the Saturday prior to her murder, around 31 October, he heard a big argument in their backyard.’ He recognised Mark’s voice. ‘He didn’t know what it was about but he knew it was heated,’ Ron continues, adding that the young man hadn’t come forward earlier because he didn’t know what the argument was about.
‘Now we had a situation,’ Ron says. ‘Mark had had an argument with Jane on the Saturday, he didn’t call her on the day she died, she had a secret she couldn’t share with anyone, and there was a policeman who’d either not been truthful or was mistaken about the time he spoke to Jane.’
Ron decided it was time to take the investigation to the next level. ‘I made the decision that both Mark and the police officer would have to be interviewed formally because I felt that was the proper process.’ But after Ron phoned the policeman, the senior constable’s solicitor intervened. Ron explained he wanted to interview the officer because the Homicide Squad had uncovered concerning information. The interview was arranged, but it was of no help to the investigation. ‘The police officer adopted his right to silence,’ Ron says. ‘On advice, he made no comment. He also refused to participate in a line-up and refused to give his DNA for the purposes of elimination.’
But as Ron knew, there are other ways to uncover information. ‘While the policeman was at the Homicide Squad I took out a warrant to search his house,’ Ron says, adding that he decided to look around himself. What he saw startled him. ‘The mantelpiece was virtually a shrine to Jane,’ he reveals. ‘Also, the code to his mobile phone, which we took possession of, was Jane’s date of birth.’ It was a similar situation with his computer. ‘Not only that, but he had changed his will and wanted to be buried beside her.’
There was no doubt in Ron’s mind that Jane Thurgood-Dove was more than a cleaner to this man. ‘From that point on, he remained a suspect and we worked hard to eliminate him,’ he says. He found out that on the days the two men had been seen in the car, the policeman was not rostered on at work. ‘And on the day just one man was seen in the car, he was working.’
Ron paid the officer’s mother a visit. She told him her son had been fascinated by her ex-husband – a well-known criminal, and used to go to the State Library to research him. But there was no crime in that and it did not shed any light on the gunman’s identity.
However, as it happened, there was someone who claimed to know the killer’s real identity – and he was ready to talk.
‘I got a phone call from a very well-known underworld figure, Des “Tuppence” Moran,’ Ron says. ‘Des and I had, I guess, a mutual respect for each other. He said, “I would never normally do this but that was an innocent lady that was shot dead”,’ Ron recalls.
Moran told Ron he was at a coffee shop in Ascot Vale when one man passed a gun to another, who fitted the description of Thurgood-Dove’s killer. Two days later, the man who’d borrowed the firearm returned it and the men had words. ‘You shot that lady,’ the gun’s owner had accused the other man. Moran also told Ron the word on the street was that the hit had been arranged by someone Thurgood-Dove knew. Ron investigated but he could not build a case on rumours.
Even though it seemed incongruous for the underworld to be talking about Thurgood-Dove’s murder, it kept Ron open to all manner of possibilities. There had to be some reason why this picture-perfect mum was shot down outside her home in Niddrie, a middle-class suburb that rarely, if ever, made the news.
As the cogwheels of Ron’s mind turned, the phone rang.
‘Out of the blue I got a call from the policeman saying, “I want to see you”.’
Out it poured. ‘The policeman told me he’d been having an affair with Jane for about three years,’ Ron says. ‘That it had continued probably right up until three or four months before her murder. That he actually loved her and felt aggrieved that no one considered his feelings.’ The officer told Ron he was now prepared to participate in the investigation, and was subsequently interviewed by Detective Sergeant Gordon Hynd. ‘The policeman explained how their relationship started, but denied any involvement in her death,’ Ron says. It was helpful to hear about the policeman’s relationship with Thurgood-Dove, but it didn’t progress the investigation.
A while later, Ron decided to interview the policeman and Mark Thurgood-Dove again, arranging for them to both come into Homicide on the same day. ‘The purpose of that was to offer them a polygraph test,’ he says. It would be the first time Australian police would allow a lie detector test to be conducted and even though Ron knew the results could not be presented in co
urt, he believed it was a helpful investigative tool. ‘Polygraphs are good to eliminate the innocent,’ he says.
Ron explained to both men they did not have to sit the test, which would be conducted by former Victoria Police detective Steve Van Aperen, better known as The Human Lie Detector. ‘I explained to them it was a win–win situation: if you pass the test, you’ll never hear from me again, and if you fail, it isn’t admissible in court.’
Mark Thurgood-Dove took the test first. He passed.
Not so the police officer.
Both men were told of the results and, according to Ron, the policeman took it badly. ‘He was very shaken. He spoke to some people about taking a second test – he could not believe it.’ But as Ron points out, even though he believes polygraphs can help eliminate the innocent, those who are not guilty sometimes fail. ‘Polygraphs are believed to have an accuracy of around 92 per cent, so there is some small room for error,’ he says.
The policeman did not want to appear in a line-up so Ron decided to devise another way for the witnesses to get a good look at the him. So, without him knowing, Ron surreptitiously arranged for the officer to go to a public place where the girl and the woman who’d witnessed Jane Thurgood-Dove’s murder could clearly see him. ‘At the end of the process they were both asked if they had seen anyone in the last two hours who looked like the gunman.’ Both said they had not.
Even though information constantly came to hand, the solution to Jane Thurgood-Dove’s murder was no clearer. Ron found it frustrating. ‘Understandably, there was a lot of pressure to solve the case from a community point of view,’ he says. ‘It kept generating media attention and was a case that the public followed.’ Ron worked on it for six weeks in a row without a day off, until Colleen ordered him to have a day’s rest. But still, his mind ticked. ‘The team was overloaded with information and it was about keeping on top of it and steering the ship.’ Ron tried to narrow down the facts.
‘So this was the situation: we knew that the policeman had not been up front about the length of his phone call, he was in love with Jane, he’d been in a relationship with her, he had no alibi on the day of the murder and he failed the polygraph.’
‘Even though there were facts to support that the police officer was involved, my gut said he wasn’t,’ Ron says. ‘On a whiteboard we had reasons why it could have been him, but looking at it rationally, why would he get someone else to do it? Why not do it on his own? If he was in a relationship with her, why not do it while she was cleaning his house?’ And then there was the question: if he loved Thurgood-Dove so much, why would he want to do it at all?
‘So about two to three years into the investigation I undertook a covert operation in the hope of getting new evidence against the police officer or proving his innocence,’ Ron says. He cannot go into the detail, as it would reveal police methodology, but it certainly did not point to the police officer’s involvement in any way.
Even though the case was proving one of the toughest of Ron’s career he had no plans to give up. He recalled one of the mantras on the whiteboard at Detective Training School: ‘Failure is not an option’.
He knew, however, that sometimes cases remained unsolved, no matter how much time and effort police put into investigating them. The Homicide Squad was boasting a 93 per cent success rate – but would this be one of them?
Fortunately, Ron was leading a team of five of the Squad’s best detectives. ‘I think the culture was very good as we were all passionate, dedicated officers who were focus driven,’ he says. Ron saw it as his responsibility to set the bar high and his troops never let him down. Not only did they work skilfully and relentlessly on the case, but they lived up to Ron’s ethical standards. ‘Trust was never an issue,’ he says. ‘There was always a goal which was to achieve a result.’ Ron never encountered any political pressure but the media increasingly hounded him for answers. ‘It was about learning to work with the media and not against them,’ he explains. ‘It was sometimes a challenge, but I hoped in the long run it would be worth it.’
As a way of taking advantage of the media’s unfailing interest, Ron and his colleagues held more than thirty media conferences, imploring the public to come forward if they knew anything, no matter how small, about the Thurgood-Dove murder. Ultimately police received more than 1300 pieces of information. It was encouraging but would it be enough?
*
Years went by and Ron was unable to crack the Jane Thurgood-Dove case, but not for want of trying. Then in 2003, Police Commissioner Christine Nixon announced a $1 million reward for information about her murder. Her parents, John and Helen Magill, had long been advocates of an increased reward, which had previously been set at $100,000.
On the day the seven-figure sum was announced, Ron received a phone call at Homicide from a man who said, ‘I’ve only ever met you once. I know what happened. I’m not going to be greedy. I only want $100,000.’
In what sounded like a conversation from a TV drama, the caller told Ron where to meet him. ‘He said, “I’ll be wearing a balaclava. You give me the hundred thousand in a paper bag, I’ll give you the information, and you’ll never see me again”. I said, “It doesn’t work that way. It’s paid on results”.’ Reward money was paid only when someone’s information led to the arrest and conviction of those responsible.
Ron knew this might finally be his chance to find out who had murdered Thurgood-Dove, so he sought his superiors’ advice. ‘After an hour-and-a-half of negotiation it was agreed we’d pay him an initial deposit while we checked his information to see if it was correct,’ Ron says. ‘We’d pay the balance on an agreed date but it certainly wouldn’t be $100,000.’
The meeting place was a carpark near the beach at Geelong. ‘The condition was that I had to go alone to meet him,’ Ron says. But this seasoned detective wasn’t stupid and he knew, from the time he was attacked in St Kilda, what it felt like to wonder if he was going to live or die. ‘There were security measures put in place,’ he acknowledges.
The men had arranged to meet at 10.30, and Ron arrived on time. As he waited in his car, the informer called Ron on his mobile to check if he was there. ‘I said I was, and would see him soon.’ Ron’s plan – should he need one – was to get out of the car quickly if he were threatened. ‘Action will always beat reaction,’ he says, recalling another of his favourite sayings. ‘I figured if he jumped in the car with a gun, I was going to jump out the driver’s door.’
Ron expected the man be five to ten minutes away – enough time to psych himself up for a potentially dangerous encounter and ensure his colleagues were on high alert. But he didn’t even have time to call them. ‘Before I’d even dialled, this person was sitting beside me in the passenger side of the car,’ Ron recalls. ‘He’d jumped straight in the car. I shat myself!’
The mysterious informer opened a packet of cigarettes. Ron, who’d taught himself to smoke so he could fit in with crooks and make them feel relaxed, puffed on a couple too, even though he hated the taste. Beneath the haze of smoke and promising to be honest, the man dropped a bombshell. ‘He said, “The actual gunman is dead. He cocked it up. He shot the wrong person and was never paid for the job”,’ Ron says. ‘He said, “I’ll give you his name but I’m telling you, he’s dead”.’
The informer told Ron the gunman’s name was Stephen Mordy, who was connected to a bikie gang in Geelong. He also inferred that a man named Jamie Reynolds – who was also connected to Geelong bikies – had helped steal the cars. He only had a nickname for the getaway driver. Ron said he would look into the information and speak to the informer again in a few weeks. He then gave him the money in a brown envelope.
*
Back at Homicide, the detectives scrutinised the new information and found that Stephen Mordy was indeed dead. ‘We also discovered that Stephen Mordy looked like the FACE image of the gunman,’ Ron says. The detectives also identified the alleged c
ar thief, Jamie Reynolds.
Ron’s next step was to speak to a contact from Geelong – an ‘old-style crook’ in his sixties who had spent time in jail and knew who was who in the criminal underworld. ‘He confessed to me that Jane’s murder was a case of mistaken identity, that it was meant as payback for a man who lived in Muriel Street who had a criminal record,’ Ron says. ‘He indicated it was meant for the criminal’s wife.’
As the pieces of the puzzle finally appeared to fall into place, the Homicide Squad was at its busiest ever, investigating Melbourne’s now infamous gangland war. It meant that Ron couldn’t use the technical and specialist resources normally available to him because they were being monopolised by Taskforce Purana, set up to investigate a string of underworld murders. Ron wanted to kick-start another investigation around the alleged car thief, Jamie Reynolds, and find out the getaway driver’s real name. But he was stymied. ‘While the investigation was on hold, Jamie Reynolds drowned in 2004 in a boating accident,’ Ron says. He wouldn’t be getting anything out of him.
The situation disgusted Thurgood-Dove’s dad, John Magill, who challenged senior executives at Victoria Police. ‘He was upset that more resources were going into finding out who had killed criminals rather than his daughter, who had never been in trouble with police,’ Ron says.
As time went by, Ron was able to identify a man he thought might have been the driver, but there was not enough evidence to lay any charges. Then, about ten years into the investigation, came another promise of a breakthrough. ‘One night at midnight I got a phone call from a criminal and he said, “There’s a man who knows exactly what happened to Jane Thurgood-Dove”,’ Ron recalls.