by Yoni Bashan
Two weeks later Jack was summoned back to Broken Hill Correctional Centre for a progress update on finding Macris. He still hadn’t found an address or photograph. At the airport he spotted Fadi Ibrahim at the boarding gate with an entourage around him – guys from Kings Cross like Semi ‘Tongan Sam’ Ngata, the Ibrahim family’s long-standing security guard, and Jim ‘Sid’ Habkouk, another close friend who acted as a driver and gofer for the family. With Jack included they were a group of six heading to the prison. For Fadi, it was the first time he was seeing his brother since the shooting.
They walked through the gates of Broken Hill Correctional Centre and took seats in the visiting area, a few minutes before Michael walked out. Fadi showed a more playful side to his character, hiding between two vending machines and surprising his brother by jumping out when he arrived. Afterwards Fadi lifted his shirt and showed off his scars, telling Michael about how awful it had been to be cooped up at home. He’d been recuperating at their mother’s house.
Jack couldn’t hear what was said, but he saw Michael lean in and whisper something in Fadi’s ear. Whatever it was, Fadi seemed to reel at what he heard. Jack figured it must have been about Macris.
‘Are you sure?’ Fadi asked. He seemed genuinely surprised by what he’d just heard. ‘I thought it was someone else,’ he said.
A few hours later, as the group of six walked through the streets of Broken Hill looking for a place to grab lunch, Fadi motioned to Jack to fall behind a few steps to speak in private. Their conversation gravitated quickly towards Macris.
‘So, is this thing going to happen quickly?’ he asked.
Jack said locating John Macris was still a problem. ‘Nobody knows where he is,’ he said.
‘I can help you with that,’ Fadi replied. As it turned out, his girlfriend, Shayda, had gone to university with John Macris’s girlfriend, Aimee Fischer-Gray, and had been to their house in Chippendale for study group assignments. Macris had been uncomfortable about it too. He’d even asked Shayda to keep the location a secret.
A few days later Fadi called Jack to a meeting in the car park of Royal North Shore Hospital where he was having a check-up for his injuries. As Jack approached, Fadi pulled out a real estate brochure from his pocket and passed it when they shook hands. The brochure went straight into Jack’s pocket. He didn’t even look at it.
‘Please … don’t fuck around. Get it done ASAP,’ Fadi said. ‘I need it.’
Jack nodded and reached back into the pocket, placing a protective hand around the folded brochure.
On the drive home he took it out and looked at the address: it was a house in Chippendale in the inner-city of Sydney.
Jack’s instructions were to pass the address to Rodney Atkinson, the triggerman. Michael had been telling him this during their conversations. But Jack barely knew Atkinson. He didn’t feel like he could trust him. Instead, he called Ayman, still none the wiser to his suspicious behaviour. Somehow, every time Ayman had been asked to do something, it never got done and his phone was always off whenever he was needed most.
They met at a car wash in Parramatta and then walked to a nearby café where they ordered coffee and split a banana bread. Jack had a backpack with him and pulled out an envelope with a slip of paper inside. He’d already thrown out the brochure Fadi had given him, ripping it up and flushing it down the toilet. It was evidence, he thought; if for some reason the brochure ever got seized by the police, his fingerprints would be found all over it. To cover himself, he’d slipped on a pair of latex gloves and transcribed the address with his left hand, to mask his handwriting.
Ayman took the envelope and assured Jack he would deliver it straight to Atkinson. Then they walked back to the car wash where Ayman’s Mercedes-Benz was waiting, driving off in separate directions – Jack heading back east to the city and Ayman heading to a park where he’d arranged to meet his handler from MEOCS, Jeffrey Hohnen. At the park, Hohnen took the envelope and studied the address on the slip of paper, immediately noticing a problem: it was the wrong house. John Macris didn’t live at the address but at the property next door.
With the efforts to get Macris suddenly accelerating, Abdy drove out to his house and decided to inform him his life might be in danger. Abdy hadn’t seen any great need to tell him up until this point – Macris had only just returned from his overseas holiday and, until the developments of that afternoon, the plot to assassinate him had been stifled at every turn. Even now, Ayman had delivered the address to police instead of Atkinson like he’d promised, buying the investigation a bit more time. That said, even if Ayman had kept his word, Atkinson still needed a photo of Macris and a gun to get moving.
Security cameras were installed around Macris’s property and he was told to remove all his pictures from Facebook. Abdy suggested he move into a hotel room temporarily and gave the same direction to his neighbours in the townhouse next door. It was their address that was mistakenly provided to Jack on the real estate brochure. Having been told the NSW Police Force would pay for their accommodation, the middle-aged couple promptly booked a room at the five-star Sheraton on the Park Hotel in the CBD, leaving the Force to pick up the astounding tab.
Michael Ibrahim fumed at Jack when he found out he had delivered the address to Ayman rather than Atkinson. Threats were made and Jack was accused of bringing the whole plot to another grinding halt. When asked, Jack lied about Atkinson and said he’d lost his phone number. Michael didn’t buy it. He raged at Jack, shouting down the line that he’d been useless at every turn, almost traitorous, whether it was finding an address for Macris, a photograph of him, or making a simple delivery like he’d been instructed.
Jack’s problem had been his conscience. He didn’t want to be part of any plot to have Macris killed, but at the same time he wanted to stay ingratiated with the Ibrahims and work his way into their inner circle.
Fearing his life may depend on it, he drove to Fadi Ibrahim’s house to ask for his help. Jack thought that if he could get a photograph and deliver it with the address then he might redeem himself to Michael. The house was immaculate; it looked like the interior of a designer showroom, filled with modern furniture and reflective ornaments. Jack pulled up a chair next to Fadi at a long table in the dining room where a laptop was set up. Using Shayda’s Facebook profile, they accessed Macris’s girlfriend’s page and printed off a picture of Macris in a grey t-shirt at a party. It was cut down to a reasonable size, printed and placed into an A4 envelope, which was delivered that night to Atkinson with another copy of Macris’s address, written down with the same precautions as last time. It was all for nothing, though. By then Atkinson had already been given a photograph of Macris, receiving it from Jim ‘Sid’ Habkouk, the Ibrahim family’s driver and confidante. Tired of Jack’s bullshit, Michael just called Habkouk and asked him to make the delivery and get things moving.
With the photograph and address in place, the only thing missing was a gun. For Brad Abdy, this meant it was time to make a few decisions. He had a solid ‘telephone brief’, as it’s known in the police force, a circumstantial case made up of tapped phone calls and coded conversations. With Ayman’s evidence to corroborate the phone calls, he felt the investigation was in a good position to make arrests. But even Abdy knew a jury would need more proof of what kind of conspiracy was being planned. Was Michael Ibrahim trying to kill Macris or simply rob him for money? For the case to succeed Abdy needed to prove definitively that the goal was murder. Without a gun or something more substantial to suggest that a slaying was on the cards, there was ample room for a good defence lawyer to throw enough doubt at a jury and tell them that, sure, a conspiracy was afoot to steal, or bash, or harm; but not to kill anyone.
A decision was made to keep the investigation running a bit longer – a gun would be a compelling piece of evidence to put before a jury and Abdy knew that Atkinson was in the process of trying to find one.
This had been another sticking point in the conspiracy plot. A new gun was expensive, costing anyw
here between $5000 and $10,000, depending on the type of weapon. Abdy read the intercepted text messages between Atkinson and Michael and could see the frustration building. All sorts of factors had to be nailed down: the cash, the transfer, finding the gun itself from a willing buyer.
Finally, on 12 September, Atkinson wrote a text message to Michael Ibrahim: ‘Got a girl, she’s hot, need 7, get them to put it in my TAB account.’ Abdy knew this was code. Atkinson was asking for $7000 to buy a handgun.
Abdy’s plan was to wait until Atkinson had picked up the gun and, only then, move in for an arrest. Atkinson was placed under close surveillance and scrutinised to make sure the weapon didn’t sneak into his hands without their knowledge; they couldn’t afford to wait – once he had the gun, it was time to move.
As these preparations were made, Abdy reached out to Smithers and asked her to set up a meeting with her source. By then, Abdy had become aware that Jack was her informant – the penny had dropped during one of their phone conversations. Something twigged as the two detectives compared notes – Abdy had a realisation and he asked Smithers directly.
They all met at Burnside Gardens, a park area in Oatlands northwest of the CBD, right next to Parramatta. Jack was there with his lawyer. Abdy arrived a few minutes later, walking over with Smithers standing next to him.
Abdy told Jack that there was evidence implicating him in the plot to have John Macris killed. Discussions had been overheard which suggested he’d been complicit in the search for Macris’s address and photograph. Jack nodded, saying nothing. He kept listening as Abdy outlined arrangements that could help him evade the charges. Abdy wanted Jack to roll and suggested he wear a body wire to record some conversations with Michael Ibrahim. Jack said no. It was too dangerous. The other option, Abdy said, was to make a formal statement to police, co-operate fully, and give evidence in court. Jack nodded and said he would consider his options. He wasn’t a fan of any of those proposals.
Before they parted Abdy asked Jack if he knew the name of the triggerman hired to shoot Macris. It was a throwaway question, a test to see if he would tell the truth. Abdy, of course, already knew that Rodney ‘Goldie’ Atkinson was being paid to do the job.
Jack said he didn’t know. Another lie.
Two days later, the arrests began.
Abdy knocked hard on the front door of Atkinson’s townhouse, calling out for him to open up.
‘Rodney,’ Abdy shouted into the door. ‘We have a search warrant!’
It was about 8:30am, Wednesday, 24 September. The townhouse was located on Penelope Lucas Lane, just across the road from Rose Hill racecourse. Standing behind Abdy were half a dozen detectives, including one with a camera to film the search.
Surveillance officers had watched Atkinson meet a gun supplier the previous night at Parramatta railway station, a man who had brought the weapon, a German made Ruger pistol, all the way from Newcastle. With the gun in play, the decision had been made to move on Atkinson first thing in the morning.
He opened the door wide and greeted the detectives cordially, signalling his intention to co-operate. He inspected the warrant and its mechanical, itemised contents: ‘firearm parts’, ‘ammunition’. Abdy asked whether any of the items listed were inside his house.
‘Oh, fuckin’ heaps,’ Atkinson said.
As Atkinson was read his rights, search officers moved through the doorway and spread out across each room unzipping bags and opening drawers. One of the search officers, looked in a cupboard above the fridge and found a Ruger pistol in plain sight with a silencer jammed onto it. Next came a hit-kit a few minutes later. Inside it was a police badge and business cards belonging to a serving officer, two latex gloves, a .45-calibre pistol, a photograph of John Macris, and a torn piece of envelope with the address in Chippendale written on it.
Across town, Fadi Ibrahim, still recuperating and requiring ongoing medical treatment, presented himself to Waverley Police Station with his solicitor and was placed under arrest. He’d been summoned by phone to appear while the search of Atkinson’s home was continuing. This happened often during arrests considered low risk. Ibrahim declined to be interviewed at the station and was taken into custody. It was front-page news the next morning: three months since he’d been shot, Fadi Ibrahim was being accused of orchestrating the payback. Both he and Atkinson were charged with conspiracy to murder. Charges against Michael Ibrahim and Jim ‘Sid’ Habkouk followed soon after.
Abdy watched Jack to see how he would react to the arrests. The hope was that he would read about the charges in the paper and contact detectives to make a deal. Abdy waited but never heard from him. Three days later he was arrested outside his solicitor’s office and charged with the same offence as the others: conspiracy to murder.
Jack turned down several offers to make a statement while in custody. Each time detectives would visit, he sent them away empty handed, telling them he would think about his options. ‘I still haven’t made up my mind,’ he said on 2 November to some detectives who came to visit.
Abdy already had Ayman on his side, ready to assist and give evidence in court, a brave move, but Ayman had his motives, namely the drug charges he was facing in Victoria. Abdy felt that a statement from Jack would make his case irrefutable. With Jack, the prosecution case would have not one but two people directly involved in the conspiracy giving evidence against the Ibrahim brothers and their alleged co-offenders.
On 29 January, Jack finally agreed to make one of two statements to police in exchange for an indemnity against prosecution. After three months of telling Abdy he was still weighing his options, Jack was moved to the protection wing of Long Bay Correctional Centre where he gave a 45-page recap of everything that had taken place during the conspiracy plot – from his first meeting with Michael Ibrahim in prison to the day he delivered Macris’s photograph to Rodney Atkinson.
The case went to trial in good shape. Abdy had Atkinson with a hit-kit in his house, recordings of Michael Ibrahim, and two pivotal players attesting to the fact that every recorded phone conversation, analysed by the Strike Force Bellwood detectives, had been geared towards shooting John Macris.
But as the case proceeded in court it took several knocks. First, Fadi Ibrahim was ruled unfit to stand trial due to his injuries, a bitter blow for the detectives. They’d worked hard to bring him to the dock, but his lawyers successfully argued he was too ill to attend the proceedings and so the charges were withdrawn.
Then the charge against Jim ‘Sid’ Habkouk, which arose out of an allegation that he had delivered a photograph of Macris to Atkinson, was thrown out of court. His defence lawyer had successfully argued that Habkouk had delivered an envelope to Atkinson but no evidence had been produced to show that he knew what was inside of it.
That left Michael Ibrahim and Rodney Atkinson in the stand. Both defendants pleaded not guilty to their charges of conspiracy to murder, which, on the strength of the police case, seemed unwinnable.
Defence lawyers for both Ibrahim and Atkinson mounted the argument that their clients had intended to collect money from Macris rather than kill him.
Their joint trial had proceeded smoothly until a television news report, revolving around an unrelated shooting that mentioned members of the Ibrahim family, derailed everything. Fearing the jury might be prejudiced by the coverage, the judge ordered a new trial and empanelled a new jury for hearings starting in April 2012. From here, everything went downhill.
For reasons that weren’t clear – though rumours of a cash incentive did make their way back to Abdy – Ayman fled the country before the second trial commenced, sending a text message to Abdy in advance to apologise for his absence.
Without Ayman, the trial drew more heavily on Jack’s evidence to prove the conspiracy – Jack, after all, had intimate knowledge of the plot and remembered Michael Ibrahim’s conversations, his statement laying out their many discussions in exquisite detail. In court, however, his chequered past was laid bare as Ibrahim’s and Atkinson�
��s lawyers went to work on him, their attacks designed to prove he was a self-serving drug dealer who was only giving evidence under indemnity to save himself. He was painted to the jury as a liar and pretender, a man who admitted to supplying drugs, procuring chemicals and taking acting classes, revelations that all caught the prosecution off guard.
The killer blow came when Jack was asked about lengthy interviews he had given to officers with the NSW Crime Commission while he was still in prison. These had occurred before he’d agreed to co-operate with the NSW Police Force.
Damning comments were made during these interviews with the commission. Jack was asked about allegations he’d made against the Bellwood detectives, including Brad Abdy, suggesting they had threatened and coerced him into making a statement. Abdy and his colleagues flatly denied the allegations, but, in front of the jury, this dirty laundry was untidy and difficult to explain. Consider: if Jack’s statement had been forced by coercion, then his credibility was ruined. If he was lying about being threatened then, well, he was a liar and his evidence would still lose all credibility. Either way, the revelations shattered the evidence of their only witness and snookered the prosecution case.
On 10 December 2012, the jury acquitted both Michael Ibrahim and Rodney Atkinson of conspiring to murder John Macris, finding that it couldn’t be proved beyond a reasonable doubt that they had intended to kill him, rather than rob him.
Atkinson pleaded guilty to possession of the firearms found during the search warrant on his home, which saw him handed a minimum seven years in prison. He successfully appealed this sentence in November 2014 and it was dropped to a term of five years and three months.
It was while serving out his sentence for possession of firearms that Atkinson received a visit from Strike Force Skelton detectives. Having finally collated all their evidence and tied up each loose end, they were ready to charge Atkinson over the alleged kidnapping of South Australian drug dealer John Baroutas back in June 2008. The case proceeded to court but was eventually thrown out on a legal technicality – the charge had been set out based on NSW legislation and, therefore, wasn’t applicable to a crime committed in South Australia.