by Justine Ford
Ron asked Gribble if he had told anyone else. ‘Yes, about four years ago,’ he replied. He had told Stephen’s brother, Laurie Bradley.
After all these years, the police were making progress. The only problem was that Gribble didn’t want to make a statement. Ron hoped to persuade him.
The day after speaking to his new informer, Ron went to meet Elvira. ‘I was a bit apprehensive because I was going to tell her I was going to solve it,’ he recalls. She told him that was what police had told her in the past. She wasn’t expecting a miracle after all these years.
‘Why should I trust you?’ she asked him.
‘I said, “You’re going to have to”.’
Ron then revealed the new information and will never forget Elvira’s emotional reaction. ‘She said, “While I accepted my daughter had died, for sixteen years I still waited for her to come in the door. Then after twenty years I went to the doctor because I was still struggling. The doctor said, ‘Get over it, move on, look after your family’, and that’s what I’ve done. But now, you’ve come and knocked on my door, and it’s as raw as if it was yesterday”.’ Seeing the misery etched on the German-born woman’s face, Ron silently vowed to do everything in his power to help her.
Next, Ron spoke to Bradley’s brother, Laurie. Ron explained to Laurie that he had a moral obligation to tell him what he knew. ‘The following day, as a result of the phone call, I met Laurie Bradley, who told me what Norm had told me, and he spoke of a comment Stephen had made at their mother’s funeral. It had something to do with Michelle.’
Back in Melbourne, Ron and his team started investigating Bradley. ‘We had many conversations about how to progress a case that was almost thirty years old,’ he says. ‘What tactics are we going to use?’
Ultimately, Gribble agreed to make a statement. ‘That became the crucial piece of the puzzle because we were going to dredge up evidence about what the accused had said to him,’ Ron explains, adding that part of his initial investigation was covert, and the second part was overt. He and his team thoroughly interrogated the original file. Interestingly, Bradley’s name was in there but the original investigators had set their sights on Greg Gleadhill. The wrong man.
More than a year of intense investigation passed during which Ron and his team felt they had gathered enough evidence.
Ron was geared up to arrest Bradley just as the Jill Meagher controversy was about to break. ‘I arrested Stephen at a bus-stop in November 2013,’ he remembers. Bradley was on his way back to the boarding house where he lived after working as a cleaner at a veterinary surgery. ‘When I arrested him, I said I was reinvestigating the death of Michelle Buckingham and thought he could help. He didn’t question it. He was quiet. I would say he looked like a shy person.’
At the offices of the Brisbane Homicide Squad, Ron asked Bradley if he knew anything about Michelle Buckingham’s death. ‘He said, “No, I’ve never heard her name”.’
Ron asked Bradley if he had been in Shepparton at the time of the murder, to which Bradley said he thought he had been. Ron pointed out that would make him the only guy in Shepparton who had never heard of her. The detective asked if Bradley had been to the caravan park where Buckingham had lived, or the Pine Lodge Hotel in Shepparton East.
‘Then I asked, “Have you ever told anyone you killed Michelle Buckingham?” ’ Bradley said no, he had not.
Ron noticed Bradley’s uneasy body language. ‘He had his hands on his knees and couldn’t control his feet,’ he remembers. ‘Then I said, “Your brother-in-law, Norm, has come forward and says on a Saturday you told him you’d stabbed Michelle Buckingham”.’
Bradley said he could not remember.
‘Is it possible,’ Ron continued, ‘you did it and can’t remember? He said words to the effect of, “I think you would remember if you’d stabbed someone. Surely I’d remember if I did”.’
As the interview continued, Bradley claimed he did not remember telling his brother-in-law he had stabbed Buckingham. But after about an hour, his tone changed. ‘At the end it was like, ‘I might have done it but if I had I would remember,’ Ron says. ‘I guess he agreed to a proposition that he might have done it but for whatever reason he’d blocked it from his memory.’
Ron released Bradley, but told him the investigation was not over. Two months later, in January 2014, Ron returned, armed with a video of Gribble talking about what Bradley had told him on the night in question. He waited at Bradley’s boarding house, knowing he was a creature of habit who would return home from work around 6 pm. ‘Sure enough, he came around the corner,’ Ron says, and spotted the police who wanted to take him in again.
Back at Brisbane’s police headquarters, Ron cautioned Bradley and explained that he had the video containing what Gribble had told him. ‘You don’t have to watch it,’ he said, but Bradley agreed to look. ‘He sat there for ten minutes glued to the screen. He did not move.’
Once it was over, Ron asked Bradley if he had anything to say. ‘He said something like, “I might’ve done it”.’ He said he had been having dreams for twenty years in which a young girl with long black hair sat on his chest and was having trouble breathing. ‘In the dream, he took the knife and plunged it into the girl. He recalled the knife going in like butter, and cutting his hand.’
He also said he dreamt of being at the back of the Pine Lodge Hotel. ‘Then he said he dreamt of driving very fast in the car,’ adds Ron. ‘I said, “Well, put the dream to one side, what do you actually remember?” He said, “That’s the difficult part. I have trouble distinguishing between dreams and reality”.’
As it happened, Bradley had received psychological treatment for disturbing dreams for about thirteen years, so Ron tracked down his counsellor. ‘While he’d spoken to her about having bad dreams, he’d never told her about what was in them,’ Ron says. ‘I had been hoping in the counsellor’s file he’d have made admissions to killing Michelle.’
But it didn’t matter. Once Ron and his crew put together their brief, the Director of Public Prosecutions believed there was enough evidence on which to charge Bradley. ‘So Allan Birch, Simon Hunt and I went back to his boarding house around 6 am,’ Ron says. The detectives arrested him and said they were taking him back to Melbourne. Bradley asked if he could pack up his room, which was barren except for a few clothes and a twenty-inch flat-screen TV. He also asked if he could go upstairs and farewell his mate. Ron said he could.
‘To some extent I felt a bit sad,’ Ron admits. ‘He was in his early fifties and walked out of that boarding house with all his worldly belongings in one small bag.’
‘When the arrest came I was really quite emotional,’ Tammy Mills says. ‘I remember Ron ringing me about it. I think he was crying over the phone and I was crying too.’
Back at Brisbane’s police headquarters, Ron interviewed Bradley once more. Bradley was still having troubling distinguishing reality from his nightmares. Ron arranged for two counsellors to see him and he was taken to the city watchhouse, where he was charged and remanded, before being flown back to Melbourne.
At the committal hearing in Shepparton, Bradley was ordered to stand trial for murder. Before the trial, he contacted Ron’s Homicide Squad colleague, Detective Senior Constable Simon Hunt, and asked to be re-interviewed. ‘He then said he remembered the night and said, to the best of his recollection, Michelle was probably killed at the hotel that Saturday afternoon and placed in the back of his car,’ Ron says. He said he probably slid his hand down the knife, which is how he cut himself.’ He claimed, however, that he had just been pretending to stab her.
But Elvira would not live to see justice done, dying of heart failure five days before the trial began. ‘Emotionally, I didn’t cope,’ Ron admits. ‘I’d spoken to her just a week before her death. I was asked to go to her funeral, but I just couldn’t. They say you shouldn’t get emotional when you’re investigating jobs but I kne
w I was going to solve it. And I’ll never forget how she told me she trusted me.’
The heartbroken mum had been right to trust him: in October 2015, a jury found Stephen Bradley guilty of her daughter’s murder. It was by this time the oldest solved homicide in Victoria and the last case of Ron’s career. ‘I was sad that Elvira didn’t get to see the result,’ he says. ‘But her daughter and son did, and they were most grateful they got an answer. They say that their mum will know from above what the result was.’
‘He makes me believe in the police force and the job they do,’ Tammy Mills says of Ron. ‘He cares so much about his work. To have someone like that representing victims, people like Michelle who don’t have a voice – you couldn’t have anyone better than him. He gives a bit of himself. It’s not a contrived, planned thing. That’s him.’
Bradley was sentenced to twenty-seven years behind bars with a non-parole period of twenty-one years. During sentencing, Justice Robert Osborn praised Ron’s finely honed interview technique. ‘What probably gave me the most satisfaction was that the judge said the interview was “masterful”,’ Ron says. ‘So, after twenty-five years at Homicide, I had mastered interview technique.’
He says the sad thing now is that exact technique is no longer taught at Homicide. ‘You don’t build something up then watch the wall get torn down,’ he says wistfully. ‘But I wasn’t part of the future of that office.’
*
Over a career spanning more than four decades, the man who’d once dreamt of becoming like his TV idols on Homicide left a lasting legacy for police. ‘I’d like to think that the legacy I left Homicide was around the way in which I dealt with the families of victims and my commitment to a strong work ethic. I’d also like the techniques and interview skills we developed to continue on and become standard practice,’ he says. ‘I’d also like to be remembered for treating criminals with respect – for trying to understand things from their point of view.’
Ron does not speak poorly of those who let him walk out the door of Homicide, nor will he admit he wishes he were still there. But those close to him suspect he will never get it out of his system. He might have physically walked away, they say, but there will always be a part of Ron that is still there.
Ron Iddles gave twenty-five years of his life, at significant personal sacrifice, to the pursuit of justice. His integrity was incorruptible. He put victims and their families before himself at every turn, and solved more cases than any other homicide investigator in the country. He never said no to anyone who reached out to him for help, especially fellow police. He is a titanic figure in the history of Australian policing.
Now, at the Police Association, Ron wants to help other officers enjoy robust careers by encouraging them to balance their lives. ‘This is something I am now passionate about,’ he says, ‘helping members understand how they change once they become a police officer. We see everything from a very negative lens: everything is bad, so the whole world is bad, when in actual fact 99 per cent of people are good. It is understanding that concept, and developing skills to survive as a police officer. Exercise, diet and having interests outside the police force are all important. If you do not do those things, then relationships will not survive.’
Ron hopes that when his five-year term with the Police Association comes to an end, he will have left it as a modern business that comprehensively serves its members. ‘And I’d like the focus to remain on their welfare and support,’ he emphasises.
Tim Peck – who was once on the receiving end of Ron’s care – knows his old boss will make a lasting impression. ‘Ron’s greatest legacy may well be the path of change he has initiated at the Police Association to bring greater understanding and insight to the mental health issues faced by serving members,’ he says. ‘I recently obtained employment with Beyond Blue, and Ron remains a close friend and ally in creating networks to address the member welfare issues identified within Victoria Police.’
Ron often refers to his extraordinary career as his ‘journey’, and says it is one that he could not have made without his wife, Colleen. He says this is as much Colleen’s story as it is his, and that it’s ultimately a love story. ‘For more than forty years, regardless of what I did or what decision I made, she always supported me, even if she did not agree,’ Ron says. ‘Without her, I would have been nothing.’
‘I never knew I was going to have this kind of life with him,’ Colleen says. ‘I am living such a good life and it’s because of a decision I made when I was sixteen. It was the best decision I could have made.’
The next big decision, however, will be what to do once Ron retires. ‘I have a simple view that I came quietly and I want to go quietly,’ he says. ‘As a Homicide investigator, I could never predict what my next case would be, but in my mind, I was always an average guy doing a difficult job. Despite my public profile, I am a reserved person and, to some extent, I like the private life. When my job here is done, I look forward to being a private citizen again.’
What Ron knows for sure is that he’ll be taking more time out to relax with Colleen and the family. ‘We’ll go on a lot more caravan trips,’ Ron says. ‘There will definitely be driving involved.’
Any bus driving trips? ‘Well,’ Ron laughs. ‘Maybe just one …’
Snowy-haired: Ron as a baby with his ‘pop’ Victor William Iddles, circa 1955.
Early gun play: Bill Iddles taught Ron (right) to shoot tin cans with an air rifle when he was ten. After that Ron shot sparrows for his cat’s dinner.
Smiling for the camera: (left to right) Barry, Nancye and Ron.
School days: Barry and Ron at Lockington Consolidated. His teacher recalls: ‘Ron was a leader … he spoke his mind’.
The apples of her eye: Phyllis Iddles with her twin boys, Ron and Barry, and daughter Nancye.
Sunday best: (left to right) Ron, Phyllis, Nancye, Bill and Barry before church. Ron had the mole on his left cheek removed before he turned ten.
Summer holidays: For a decade of summers, the Iddles family took their yellow fibreglass caravan to the Mornington Peninsula. Front row: Barry, Nancye, Ron, Nanna Woodland, Phyllis. Back row: Bill, Pop.
Time out: The Iddles kids taking a break from their chores on the farm.
The Iddles twins with Barry’s dog, Spot. The boys had another dog named Lassie after the collie in the TV series. A year or two later Ron stopped watching Lassie and tuned in to Homicide. It made him want to investigate murders.
Big fish: Ron has caught them all his life. He still owns the fishing rod pictured.
Two men and a truck: Ron atop hay bales, with his Uncle Herb below. This 1950s Ford V8 with a five-speed crash gearbox was the first heavy vehicle Ron learnt to drive. He still dreams about it.
All dressed up: Ron first wore this pinstripe suit when he joined the Police Cadets in 1972. He thinks it is ‘the kind of suit an old man would wear’.
Ron’s graduation from the Police Academy in February 1974. (Left to right) Nanna Woodland, Bill, Ron, Phyllis, Barry, Nancye.
Engaged: Ron and Colleen in 1974.
Awarded: Ron with Colleen and Joanne after he received the Chief Commissioner’s Certificate for Courage following a violent run-in with a prison escapee in St Kilda in 1984.
Proud dad: Ron and daughter Joanne on her wedding day. It was a rainy day but the sun came out in time for this photo.
Like father, like son: Ron with newborn Matthew in 1988. Gifted at school, Matt grew up to become a pilot but also considered becoming a detective.
Run-ins with Uncle Chop Chop: Ron and his family often used to run into Mark ‘Chopper’ Read at the pub. (Left to right) Shae, Chopper, Ron. Chopper credited Ron with helping him turn his back on crime.
Family first: When Ron left Homicide, Colleen insisted he spend more time with his children and grandchildren. Now, family holidays like this one keep everyone close. Back row: Ma
tt’s girlfriend Paige, Matt, Shae, Keenan, Jo, Ron. Front row: Ella, Darcy, Marcus, Colleen.
Men from the land: Bill Iddles and Ron in Rochester, 2010.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I have had numerous approaches for my story because of my public profile. My move from the Homicide Squad to the Police Association generated an article written by Justine Ford in the Age, from which came an approach from Pan Macmillan Australia.
To Justine Ford, thank you for your patience, commitment and brilliant work in writing my story. I am aware you moved to the great state of Victoria to do this, and that was a personal sacrifice that cannot be repaid.
Thanks to Pan Macmillan for believing it is a story worth telling.
To my wife of forty-one years, Colleen, what can I say? Without you and your total support, I could never have achieved anything. I know there have been difficult times over the journey, but you have always been there regardless, and I cannot express my gratitude enough.
To my children, Joanne, Matthew and Shae, I know at times I have failed you and on many special days in your life I was not there. That is not something I can change now. The comment still rings in my ears, ‘You built the sandpit but you did not play in it.’ This is something I will forever regret. Yes, I may not say it a lot, but I love each of you dearly and will always be there for you.
Thanks to Victoria Police for giving me opportunities to work for the community but, above all, to investigate some of the most serious crimes in this state for thirty-seven years. It has been a fantastic journey that has taken me around Australia and many parts of the world. I have worked with many police officers and some have become lifelong friends. It is difficult to name them all, and if I tried I would no doubt leave some out and that is not my intention.