The Russell Street Bombing
Page 6
The trial proper began in March 1988. By this time, Stan Taylor was 51-years-old. Craig and Rodney were 26 and 23 respectively. Reed was 31.
Detectives from the Taskforce hung around the courtroom as much as they were able. Detective Chris O'Connor who had interviewed Stan Taylor at Swan Hill after his arrest, continued to get a nod of hello from the accused man. Between arrest and trial, O'Connor thought that Taylor looked like a broken man older than his years.
The evidence led at the trial suggested that the bomb car was driven to Russell Street by Peter Reed and Craig Minogue. Stan Taylor allegedly followed in the stolen Brock Commodore. Once the two-toned Commodore was parked outside the south door of the Russell Street police headquarters, the Chux Superwipe was removed from the timing device and the bomb set. One witness suggested that Taylor, Minogue and Reed had parked nearby and waited for the explosion. When the bomb when off, said the witness, the bombers were thrilled.
On Tuesday 12 July, the accused arrived to the Supreme Court to hear their verdicts. As they entered the court room, they yelled out that they were innocent. And the tension wasn't just with the accused, Detective Bernie Rankin was physically sick. He and fellow Taskforce detectives had spent two years living and breathing the Russell Street bombing. This was the day of reckoning. Rankin was quietly confident that the verdicts would vindicate their investigative efforts.
Stanley Taylor and Craig Minogue were both found guilty of the murder Angela Taylor and of causing serious injury to Iain West and Carl Donadio. Rodney Minogue was found guilty of being an accessory after the fact. The jury retired again to deliberate on its verdict for Peter Reed.
On Wednesday 13 July, the packed courtroom awaited the Reed verdict. It came around 6pm. The winter's day had been dark and ominous. As the crowd waited, tension mounted. You could have heard a pin drop. And then the verdict was read out. The jury found Reed guilty of the attempted murder of Steven Quinsee and guilty of recklessly causing serious injury to Mark Wylie in the Kallista raid. It was a surprise to most of the courtroom onlookers when the jury returned a verdict of not guilty on all counts relating to the Russell Street bombing.
It was with great irony that Peter Reed was under police surveillance on the day the bomb went off in Russell Street. He had actually been followed to Haros Avenue where police believe the bomb was assembled. Because Haros Avenue is a dead-end street, the surveillance crew waited for his car to reappear from around a bend in the road. They were unable to park covertly and still have a view of the house. The surveillance team would have taken little notice of the two-tone Holden bomb car as it drove past. And if Peter Reed was in it, they didn't see him. So it turned out that if they saw him go to Haros Avenue and didn't see him leave, then they were his alibi of sorts for the bombing.
As soon as the bomb went off, the surveillance headquarters at Russell Street was badly damaged, and all teams were recalled to the office. The team wasn't at Haros Avenue to see just who returned later on. Pity.
While the Taskforce detectives were elated at the convictions the previous day, the not guilty verdict for Reed was a crushing blow.
Taylor was sentenced to a life sentence, never to be released. Craig Minogue also received a life sentence, but the judge set a minimum term of twenty-eight years. Rodney Minogue was convicted of being an accessory after the fact but his conviction was quashed on appeal. At a re-trial in February 1990, Rodney Minogue was acquitted of being an accessory after the fact and was released from prison immediately. Peter Reed served nine years for his part in the raid shoot-out and was released in 1995.
The Jika Jika fire wouldn't be Craig Minogue's only difficulty in prison. The year he began his life sentence, another inmate called Alex Tsakmakis was found beaten to death with gym weights hidden in a pillow case and used as a cosh. Minogue was found guilty of the killing and received a second murder conviction in 1988 to run concurrently with his bombing sentence.
But aside from a fatal fire which killed five inmates, and the coshing death of Alex Tsakmakis, Craig Minogue has used his prison time productively. In 2005, he completed a Bachelor of Arts degree and has been accepted as a PhD student at LaTrobe University. He is eligible for parole in 2016.
Present Day Reflections
Looking back at the events surrounding the Russell Street bombing twenty years after it happened, many police officers see it as a starting point for an attitudinal change in the Victoria Police. For the first time, they knew that there were people out there who wanted to harm them. A year and a half later, on 12 October 1988, two police officers Steven Tynan and Damian Eyre were gunned down in Walsh Street, South Yarra. If the police were in any doubt that they were becoming targets, the cold-blooded shooting of Tynan and Eyre proved the point.
Police armed themselves for the fight - in the next decade, officers from Victoria Police would shot and kill 31 people, when in the same period there were 28 police/civilian fatalities in the rest of the states in Australia combined. A police taskforce in 1994 recommended retraining for all officers in the use of alternative methods of self-defence and appropriate force.
And twenty years after the bombing, Detective Chris O'Connor wonders whether the bombing was used as a decoy for the robbery in Donvale three hours later. The bombers knew that police from everywhere would head towards ground zero, while they headed 25km east to rob a bank.
And O'Connor believes that Stanley Taylor, at 71 years of age, is just as dangerous now as he ever was.
Given his work to catch her killers, it was fitting when crime scene examiner Wayne Ashley received the Angela Taylor Scholarship in 1995. He had completed pioneering work in Australia compiling national databases on both shoe and tyre impressions and used the scholarship money to travel to Finland to attend an international conference on such databases. He went on to complete a Masters Degree in shoe impression evidence, and make connections in the FBI with similar experts. Ashley's work as a crime scene examiner had taught him to push the boundaries of investigations. The Russell Street bombing and other cases like it hinged around forensic evidence. No one would ever underestimate the importance of a dedicated, highly-trained forensics team working alongside a team of dedicated, highly-trained detectives.
A couple of years ago, Carl Donadio noticed a small bump on the back of his right hand. When a doctor cut it out, it was a bit of shrapnel from the blast eighteen years earlier. It wasn't the first time and probably won't be the last time that shrapnel finds its way through his system and rises to the surface to work its way out. It is a reminder of an event that he rarely thinks about.
Having a naturally resilient nature, Donadio knows in some ways, he was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time and was unlucky. But he has had enough time to ponder the other side of unlucky. He was lucky to survive. He was lucky to learn profound life lessons at such a young age. He was lucky to be nineteen and to know how important family and friends where. He was lucky to carry little permanent damage after such a cataclysmic event. And he was lucky enough to discover that life was precious and that any day could be your last. From this, he developed a philosophy of seizing the day and taking opportunities outside his comfort zone.
He achieved his early ambition of joining the undercover and surveillance unit and worked there for most of his policing career. When the opportunity came to leave the police force to pursue a career in private security, he left after fourteen years on the job without looking back. He had loved his time in the police force, but took up the new opportunity with enthusiasm.
Donadio also learnt about the power of the mind and the body to heal itself. Having suffered such severe injuries, he is certain that his desperate desire to get back on his feet served him well and aided in his recovery. He reflects that in the days of the bombing, the police force, to his knowledge, only had one psychiatrist. He received no follow up psychological assistance to recover from his trauma. About six months after the bombing, he was sent a questionnaire from the police psychiatrist where he
had to tick boxes to say how he was feeling. He duly filled it out and sent it back but never heard anything in response. Things would be very different today, twenty years down the track.
And what does Carl Donadio think of the men responsible for his injuries? The truth is, he doesn't think of them at all. 'The bombing wasn't directed at me,' says Donadio, twenty years later. 'It was directed at the Victoria Police. I never took it personally.' And, he says, if he spent time and energy hating Fatty Minogue then that would mean that Minogue is still winning. And Donadio won't let that happen.
Donadio received the Victoria Police Star which is awarded to officers killed or seriously injured in the line of duty. He still tries to make every day count.
For Angela Taylor's parents, Marilyn an Arthur, not a day has gone by in the past twenty years when they haven't thought of the daughter they lost in the Russell Street bombing. Although nothing can replace her, they can see that a lot of good has come in the wake of her passing. There are fundraisers in her honour and the Angela Taylor Memorial Trust that funds current police officers to further their training both in Australia and overseas.
More recently, a rose has been names in her honour. The Angela Taylor Rose is distributed by Garden Express who donates two dollars to the Victoria Police Blue Ribbon Foundation from each rose sold.
First published in eBook form by Clan Destine Press in 2013
CDP Imprint: Crime Shots 2013
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Copyright © Vikki Petraitis
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National Library of Australia Cataloguing-In-Publication data:
Petraitis, Vikki
The Russell Street Bombing
ISBN 978-0-9875538-1-2
Cover Design © Rae Cooper