by Justine Ford
The criminal said the man with the information wanted to meet him. Ron said Friday was best. ‘No,’ the crook said, ‘if you don’t meet him tonight, you don’t get the information!’
Just what I need, thought Ron, another cloak-and-dagger rendezvous. But he realised if he didn’t speak with this latest mystery man, he might miss out on a significant lead. ‘So I rang Steve Sheahan, a detective I worked with and said, “We’re going to meet someone but I don’t know who it is”,’ Ron recalls. The meeting was to take place outside the old Melbourne Motor Inn at the top of Elizabeth Street near Flemington Road in the city.
Under the cover of night, Ron and Sheahan drove to the location and waited. Ron was never a nail-biter but not knowing who or what to expect from the impending meeting, this would have been a good time to take up the habit. Around 1.30 am, a four-wheel drive pulled up. Inside was a familiar face. ‘Straightaway I saw it was the husband of the woman suspected of being the gunman’s intended target,’ Ron says. ‘He said, “You and I are going for a walk”. I said we aren’t going anywhere, and invited him into the police car.’
They drove to a pub where they could talk.
The man told the detectives he didn’t want to be rude but essentially, they were dumb. He said he had a tape-recorded murder confession and ‘all the players in a fishbowl’. ‘He said, “All you’ve got to do is bait the rod and you’ll catch the fish”,’ Ron remembers.
It was late and Ron wasn’t in the mood for metaphors, so he asked his would-be informer exactly what he wanted. ‘He said he wanted $2 million and a public statement to say this was not a case of mistaken identity and it was not meant for his wife,’ Ron recalls. ‘And he said, “If you give me $2 million, I’ll give it to charity”.’ The man’s munificent intentions aside, Ron pointed out that the reward system did not work that way. ‘I said, “How do I know what’s on the tape is true?” ’
The detectives called an end to the meeting, but over the next three months they met at least half a dozen times with the man, who didn’t want to hand over the full recording without being paid. ‘On one occasion he played me a part of a tape,’ Ron recalls, ‘but it didn’t have a confession on it, it didn’t identify anyone, and was of no use whatsoever.’
The man then engaged a solicitor. Ron told him the only way to progress the matter was for the police to obtain a copy of the tape, including a full transcript, so they could fully investigate it. ‘The solicitor made an appointment to see the police commissioner, Christine Nixon, with the man, and the same demand was made: that Victoria Police pay $2 million for the tape.’ When Ron was asked what he thought of the offer, his answer was to the point: ‘No way.’
‘Eventually,’ Ron continues, ‘we took a different course of action and the man was subpoenaed to a coercive hearing where he was compelled to answer questions about the information he alleged to have. Further investigation as a result of the hearing established the information was totally false and of no substance.’
*
Ron spent well over a decade investigating Jane Thurgood-Dove’s murder but, much to his chagrin, he didn’t crack the case. Had the investigation been adequately resourced throughout, the outcome might have been different, but Ron isn’t one to speak in what-ifs.
He knows that none of those closest to Thurgood-Dove arranged for her to be killed. ‘Her husband, Mark, passed the polygraph test, which indicated he was in no way involved,’ Ron says. ‘The police officer was also eliminated and, on the information I have, Mordy did it.’
So that makes the most likely scenario, according to Ron, that the murder was a case of mistaken identity but with key players dead, including the gunman, and no evidence of who arranged the hit, the case remains unsolved, and the $1 million reward still stands.
†FACE (or Facial Automated Composition and Editing), is a database of sketched facial features that functions like a digital Identikit. It was created by a former officer of Victoria Police, and is now used in more than 40 countries.
17
CRIME-BUSTING DRIVER
‘Driving buses was my other world to escape into – it was like a release of pressure, and for forty-eight hours I was living another life.’
– Ron Iddles
The same year Ron began investigating Jane Thurgood-Dove’s murder, detectives from the Homicide Squad, not content with catching killers, decided they wanted to raise money for charity. So in 1997, officers who felt up for a new challenge cycled 530 kilometres over three days from Mildura on the Murray River to Port Fairy on the Great Ocean Road, with proceeds being donated to a hospital. The event has taken place every year since, with the money now donated to other worthy organisations, including Beyond Blue.
It inspired in Ron a love of long-distance cycling although he didn’t ride in the inaugural event. Instead, he drove a ten-seater support bus, which Firefly Coaches had donated for the three-day ride. The fundraiser created such a buzz that the following year more detectives wanted to take part, so Firefly upgraded them to a twenty-seater coach. Ron was impressed by the company’s community spirit and when he met their director, Joe Bono, he openly admired his luxury coaches. He also told him he drove a poultry delivery truck part-time. Bono asked Ron what licence he had. A heavy vehicle licence, Ron replied.
‘So I said to Ron, “Why don’t you come and drive some big buses?” But it wasn’t just the fact that Ron could drive heavy vehicles that led Joe to offer him a job. ‘It was his presence,’ Joe explains. ‘The way he conducted himself when I first met him. I knew he was a true professional.’ Joe kept at him until Ron said he’d consider it.
After all, driving buses was in his genes – his dad Bill used to drive the bus from Echuca to Melbourne before he was born. Ron had to resign from his poultry-delivery round, though. He felt it was time for a change and admits that coach driving was a lot cleaner and easier. Not only that, but behind the wheel of a Firefly Ron could step up his love of modern machinery. ‘Their coaches were immaculate and the way they were looked after was the envy of other bus companies. I thought it was pretty special driving a coach worth $700,000 to Adelaide.’
Colleen, however, felt differently. She had always encouraged Ron to do the things he wanted, but she could not understand why he would accept another job that took him away from his family. ‘I could honestly say his work was never a problem even when he worked forty, fifty, sixty hours straight or was away for two weeks at a time,’ she says. ‘But this did my head in.’
It took Ron a couple of trips to get into the swing of coach driving and to get the sleep he needed afterwards. He also learnt that the hour or so before dawn was the toughest for a night driver, but if he needed fresh air, he’d pull over and stretch his legs. Soon he felt even more certain that he’d made the right decision. He found long-haul driving relaxing. ‘Some people liked fishing, some liked golf … this was about having an interest outside Victoria Police and the Homicide Squad,’ he explains. ‘It could be classed as an escape because it kept me balanced and all-rounded. Sometimes, going over to collect the coach, it was like the world would lift off my shoulders, and it released any work pressure or stress.’
Along with the more peaceful job, Ron also got a kick out of operating the coach’s state-of-the-art features. He’d never driven a tractor or a truck that was this fancy. ‘I’d sit in the driver’s seat which was like a cockpit with many switches and gauges and lights. And everyone who came on board had total trust in me – that I would stay awake all night and get them to their destination safely.’ And he did, every single time, with not one complaint.
*
A year later, Ron started making daylight trips to Adelaide and after that, Joe asked if he wanted to drive from Melbourne to Sydney. Ron was enjoying it, but soon found himself doing twenty-six runs a year, which meant that, for half a year, his family didn’t see him on weekends.
‘It got to the st
age where Colleen was saying, “Why do you do it so much? Don’t you want to be at home?” But I found it a way to totally switch off. When I crossed over the bridge to collect the coach at Maidstone, it was like the world of crime had left me. I used to listen to music – country music by Charlie Pride or Jim Reeves, sometimes Celine Dion, or ABC midnight talkback.’
Sometimes lonely passengers or those unable to sleep ambled down the front of the bus, hoping for a yarn. If they needed Ron’s assistance he was there to help, but for safety reasons – and also because he relished his quiet time – he began to outlaw conversations at the start of every trip.
Ron noticed that a number of his passengers were backpackers who treated the journey as a cheap night’s accommodation. Sometimes, in the days before discount airfares, more than a dozen coaches would carry football fans from Adelaide to Melbourne to watch a game. That was one night when Ron didn’t mind a natter. ‘They were good nights because you’d talk on a two-way radio to another driver,’ he says. Ron also drove passengers from Melbourne to Sydney to watch the fireworks.
When he wasn’t driving coaches, Ron was working full-time at Homicide and increasingly turning up on the TV news. His face was becoming familiar. He recalls a passenger engaging him in conversation during a rest stop at Tintinara Roadhouse in South Australia. ‘I can’t work you out,’ he said to Ron. ‘I know your voice, I know your face. I’ve either heard you on 3AW or I’ve seen you on a cooking show.’ Ron suppressed a chuckle. ‘I never divulged who I was,’ he says. ‘That was my private life.’
Ron met other interesting characters too. ‘Another night before I left Adelaide there was a guy wearing all these gold chains and I knew he was a criminal,’ he recalls. ‘He came up and said, “You and I are on opposite sides. I know who you are”.’ Ron looked at him squarely and replied, ‘Well, you won’t have to worry then. I’ll get you to Melbourne safely’. The crook slept soundly all the way home.
On another occasion, Ron drove the coach back from Adelaide to Melbourne then, after a four-hour sleep at the depot, went to see the most important witness in a murder trial due to start the following day. The witness’s mum answered the door and was instantly taken aback. ‘You just drove me from Adelaide to Melbourne!’ she exclaimed. ‘Well, I got you here safely,’ Ron responded with a smirk. He liked that line.
*
Never one to completely switch off, Ron found coach driving a good way to solve murders. ‘There were times when I’d be driving along and thinking about a murder investigation,’ he says. ‘I’d get to a truck stop for a meal break and write down some ideas on paper.’ Sometimes, a member of his crew would ring him from the office. ‘The sergeant would ring and say they had a job. So I’d quite often give advice from the driver’s seat. That’s where I had to be conscious I didn’t talk too loudly.’
Then there was the night when Ron drove to Adelaide after an intense shift at Homicide. One of the other drivers had called in sick and Bono had phoned everyone he knew to find a replacement. ‘We had no spare drivers,’ Bono says. ‘We even rang other companies to see if they could help out.’ But no one could, so Bono decided to call Ron on the off-chance he could do a week-night shift. ‘He said he had to lock up a criminal that evening,’ Bono recalls, adding that Ron reluctantly agreed to do it on one condition – that he bring the coach to him so he could get some rest before departing.
It was Ron’s most exhausting night behind the wheel, one he swore he would never do again. ‘He’s one out of the box,’ Bono acknowledges, reflecting on what Ron did for him that night. ‘I’ve never found another person like him. He’s a beautiful man.’
*
A couple of years into the bus-driving job, Victoria Police tightened their policies around part-time jobs so Ron had to reapply to drive his beloved Fireflys. His application was immediately rejected on the basis that there was a potential conflict of interest because police had a regulatory authority over coach drivers. As with the chicken truck, Ron recognised this was a situation that demanded logic. ‘I argued that it was really the same if I was pulled over driving a motor car,’ he explains. ‘I also said there was no conflict of interest because as a coach driver I was actually governed by three other organisations – the Taxi Directorate, Vic Roads and the Department of Infrastructure.’ Once again, Ron’s superiors couldn’t argue.
And so, for years to come, between solving some of Australia’s most shocking murders, coach captain Ron Iddles safely delivered thousands more passengers to their destination. For Ron, route timetables, big machines and all things mechanical were easily managed, ran more or less as expected, and when things broke down, were fixable – parts were easily replaced. The human mind and its motivations, by contrast, were far less predictable, and the solutions to crimes often not as straightforward or even logical. Long-distance driving helped Ron work on those questions, and occasionally, it even yielded some answers.
18
TALES FROM THE UNDERWORLD
‘If you don’t break your values and don’t promise something you can’t deliver, you can get trust in the criminal world, and people will talk to you. I think over a long period of time you build up a reputation, but that doesn’t come overnight. And if you do anything to compromise it, you never get it back.’
– Ron Iddles
Organised criminals generally take an all-seasons approach to murder. Consider Melbourne’s infamous gangland war back in the 1990s and early 2000s. The underworld in Australia’s own Gotham City proved they could carry out killings on the most frostbitten of winter’s nights, so long as they were armed with a handgun, a vaguely rational motive and a fleecy-lined hoodie.
It was just after 8.30 on one such winter’s night – Friday, 15 June 2000 – when Ron took a call from D24. He should have knocked off, but typically was still at his desk, poring over evidence from the recent murder of underworld drug dealer, Richard Mladenich. ‘You’ve got a job,’ said the emergency communications officer, interrupting his train of thought. ‘It’s in Essendon. We’re pretty sure Mark Moran’s been shot.’
Richard ‘The Lionheart’ would have to wait.
*
Mark Moran was big news. The thirty-five-year-old was one of the highest profile underworld identities in the country. His mother was Judy Moran, Jason Moran was his half-brother, and his stepfather was Lewis Moran. Criminal royalty.
Ron recalls arriving at Moran’s impressive house in Essendon, protected by a wrought-iron Federation-style fence with two large gates. Moran hadn’t made it inside, but had been shot out the front while still in his white Holden ute. ‘The driver’s door was open and Mark was half out of the car, slumped,’ Ron says. ‘There was a large amount of blood around as two firearms had been used – a shotgun and a handgun.’
Even though police had responded rapidly and blocked off the street, people were appearing out of the shadows. Knowing there had been trouble, ‘The underworld had already started to arrive – they probably had a better communication system than the police,’ Ron explains. His mobile was also ringing hot. ‘Criminals were calling me and saying, “Is it true? Is it true? Is Mark dead?” ’
Mark’s stepfather was among those at the scene and he did not want to engage with the police. ‘That night I had a blue with Lewis Moran,’ Ron remembers. He was hoping the Moran family elder would help him solve Mark’s murder. ‘Standing on the verandah, I said to him, “I know you don’t have any respect for police. But you’ll find out who killed Mark before I do, so all I ask is that you get a solicitor to call me with the information”.’
Lewis Moran regarded the detective with contempt. ‘You can get fucked,’ he replied. ‘I’ll look after this myself.’
Lewis’s brother, Des ‘Tuppence’ Moran, was there too, and because of his good relationship with Ron, he tried to make peace, but it didn’t work. ‘We got no cooperation from the dad. Lewis was someone who just didn’t talk to yo
u. He just saw it as not right. But other criminals were prepared to sit down and have a coffee with me. They mightn’t have told me anything helpful, but there was often that mutual respect. But Lewis Moran had a hatred for police.’
It was almost unheard of for members of the underworld to hate Ron even though he was investigating murders in which they might have been involved. ‘It was because of that connection he has with people that others don’t,’ Ron’s former crew member Tim Peck explains. ‘You could go to any crime scene and a lot of investigators would have trouble putting aside what a person had done.’ But Ron wasn’t like that. ‘Ron had the strength to talk to people and get that bond,’ Peck adds. ‘The number of offenders who confessed to him was unparalleled.’
Not only that, but some criminals even responded favourably when they saw him because they knew he had integrity. ‘It’s honest Ron, Uncle Ron,’ they’d say. ‘I can talk to him.’
*
Among the early suspects in the murder of Mark Moran were Dino Dibra and underworld kingpin Carl Williams. Dibra had a rock-solid alibi. ‘When we got the call for the job, Dino Dibra was in our office,’ Ron says of the twenty-five-year-old, who was bumped off four months later.
What had Williams been doing at the time of Moran’s murder? Even though Ron had been working for twenty-two hours straight, he intended to find out. Accompanied by a crew member, he stormed Williams’ place at around 4.30 am. In situations like this, he knew he was taking his life in his hands. ‘You always prepare for the worst, some type of confrontation,’ he says. ‘Your heart’s pumping and there’s a massive dump of adrenaline because it’s about going into the unknown. If you are not conscious of the fact something may go horribly wrong, then you will make mistakes. You need to ensure the forced entry is swift, to ensure the element of surprise.’