Under Siege

by Belinda Neil

  I might add that at this time I was conducting inquiries into four other murders, including the shooting murder of Mark Rogers in 1988.

  Mark Rogers had been the manager of the Rex Hotel in Kings Cross and was working on the day the hotel was robbed. He was shot in the back of the head with either a .45 calibre or 9mm firearm. The same firearm had also been used to kill a taxi driver at Ashfield in that same year. The Rogers murder had never been heard at inquest because there were still so many avenues of investigation to follow.

  I worked on this case for three years on and off. During the investigation I interviewed a number of witnesses and suspects, and an informant was flown in from Queensland. The television program Australia’s Most Wanted was also used to gather information. A listening device operation involving the main suspect was organised, but unfortunately there was not sufficient evidence for anyone to be charged. Finally after twelve years the inquest into the Mark Rogers murder was heard in the Coroner’s Court, to the relief of Mark’s long-suffering parents. The murder remains unsolved and the main suspect, who was serving a lengthy prison term for armed robbery, would have been released by now.

  I felt I was drowning in paperwork. The staff officer at the Homicide Unit and I had a disagreement about my workload. He eventually agreed to take one of my murder cases, which I hadn’t even had the chance to address, and forward it to another investigator. This respite was short-lived.

  On Tuesday 30 September 1997 the crime manager at Kogarah police station asked Ange and me to look at a crime scene for him. A man had been found dead at his home in Allawah and local detectives were trying to decide whether it was a suicide or a suspicious death. Neighbours had reported hearing a noise like a single gunshot between 8pm and 9pm on the evening of the 27th, and a neighbour heard a car driving off shortly after the gunshot. The next morning a nine-year-old girl who lived nearby was walking past the man’s house and saw him lying on the floor near the front door. She thought he was drunk and the blood on the wall was spilt red wine. She told her father what she’d seen but her father did not follow it up. Another neighbour became concerned after seeing a buildup of letters in his letterbox, and went to check on him on 30 September. Realising what had happened, he contacted police immediately.

  When we got to the home we found the man lying on his back face upwards just inside the front door. He was wearing a dressing gown, socks and shoes. There was a large pool of blood near his head and what appeared to be a single gunshot wound to his jaw. A spent 9mm Norinco brand cartridge lay near his body.

  I walked past his body along a hallway to the bathroom. There was blood on the walls and in the toilet bowl, along with unflushed faeces and a pair of underpants.

  The detectives had searched his home and found documentation that identified him as Ronald Mills. We heard that Mills’s wife had died on 26 August ten years earlier, that he was depressed about her death, and that he had made comments about life not being worth living.

  Initially we thought he had shot himself in the bathroom, then dragged himself to the front door to get help and collapsed. The problem with that scenario was that there was no gun. We looked everywhere and located two older .22 calibre shotguns, but no 9mm gun. The two other firearms were later dismissed as possible weapons. It now looked very much like a suspicious death, but what was the motive?

  Strike Force Coldwater led by Detective Senior Sergeant John Thompson of Kogarah was set up to investigate. As Ange and I were already working from Kogarah our Homicide office asked us to perform an oversight role, providing assistance and Homicide support where needed.

  A post-mortem showed a partial contact gunshot wound to Ronald Mills’s right jaw. The 9mm Norinco bullet had travelled down his neck, severing his jugular vein, and entered his left shoulder. The only lead we had was that Mills was listed as a witness in a boat insurance fraud case involving a man named Paul Offer. This fraud was listed for hearing on 13 October, eleven days away. In February Nagwa Gerges, the wife of another witness, had been shot non-fatally in the head with a crossbow at her front door. Paul Offer was starting to look very much like a potential suspect in both matters.

  Investigators from the initial boat insurance fraud and from the Nagwa Gerges shooting were called in for briefings. At the same time, the strike force made inquiries into the current location of Paul Offer and the other witnesses in the fraud case, and applied for reverse call charge records from Ronald Mills’s home telephone number.

  We learned that Mark Gerges, the husband of Nagwa Gerges, owned a panel beating and spray painting business in the inner-city suburb of Rosebery. Paul Offer operated a tow truck in the southern Sydney suburbs and would drop off repair work to Gerges. Offer, an Irishman, was clearly a schemer who wanted to make money by any means possible, legal or otherwise. He had told Gerges and others stories about fighting for Britain in the Falklands and having been a member of the IRA. Many people were sceptical to say the least, though he appeared to have convinced himself that these stories were true.

  Paul Offer and his family had visited Mark Gerges’s home in St Ives. However, the two men had a falling out in October 1996 after Offer was charged with possession of stolen tools that he told police he had bought from Gerges. Gerges denied this and gave evidence on behalf of police. In November 1996 Crime Stoppers (a system that allows members of the public to report crime anonymously) received a tip from a man with an Irish accent that stolen property could be found at Gerges’s panel-beating business. Police did find stolen property there: a piece of chassis rail, Victorian registration plates and vehicle compliance plates belonging to a stolen Isuzu motorhome that Paul Offer had rented and later reported stolen. Also found was a mobile telephone with the name ‘Paul Offer’ inscribed on it. Tit for tat, perhaps.

  In retaliation a furious Gerges told police about a six-figure boat insurance fraud perpetuated by Offer. Police interviewed a number of people about this, including Ronald Mills, a marine electrician at Blakehurst Marina. Mills was able to identify the boat, a Mustang 3200, subject of the fraud. He could also confirm, as his marina was the Sydney agent for the Mustang 3200, that Paul Offer, whom he did not know, did not own any Mustang boats. Police also interviewed Offer’s supposed accomplice, Armand Scerri, and in February 1997 both Scerri and Paul Offer were charged with fraud. We contacted Armand Scerri and re-interviewed him. It was obvious to us that he had been coerced by Offer.

  Paul Offer was served with the police brief of evidence containing a witness list and the statements of all witnesses. There were statements from Mark Gerges, Ronald Mills and another man, Mark Chapman. These contained their business addresses and telephone numbers, and in the case of Mark Chapman, his home address and business address. (When serving a brief of evidence, addresses and telephone numbers of witnesses must always be deleted or blacked out.)

  From the investigators of the Nagwa Gerges shooting we learned that shortly after midnight on Saturday 15 February Mark Gerges and his wife Nagwa had both been at home at St Ives. Mark had been drinking with his brother and friends and had just bidden them goodnight. He was using the downstairs bathroom when Nagwa heard a knock at the front door. She opened the door and saw a tall man with green eyes, wearing a full balaclava and black gloves, pointing something at her. Without saying anything, he shot her at close range with a crossbow. The bolt struck her right between the eyes, pierced her skull and travelled through her brain. Mark, hearing her fall to the ground, ran to her aid. Without thinking, he pulled the bolt from her head with all the force he could muster, bending the shaft of the bolt in the process, then called the ambulance and police.

  As a result of her husband’s quick thinking, Nagwa survived the attack. However, she suffered severe head and brain injuries, including permanent semi-paralysis of her right side with moderately severe weaknesses in her right limbs, and problems with her vision and speech.

  An anonymous tip told police they would ‘find what you are looking for’ at Mark Gerges’s brother’s
panel-beating shop. Police did find four crossbow bolts, two similar to the one fired at Nagwa with red and black vanes, and two different-coloured ones. The bolts were found on top of a dusty spray booth but the bolts themselves were not dusty, suggesting they had been recently placed there.

  The investigators interviewed Paul Offer about the shooting. He denied any knowledge, telling police that he, his de facto wife and three children had travelled by car from Sydney to the Gold Coast on 14 February, arriving at the Gold Coast the following morning in time to keep an appointment with a man from Nationwide Marine. For some reason this alibi was not followed up at the time. (Months later, Strike Force Coldwater investigators spoke to the Nationwide Marine man who said there had never been any appointment with Offer.) Offer denied ever being in possession of a crossbow but told investigators he had seen a crossbow in Mark Gerges’s garage.

  The investigators narrowed their focus on the Gerges family and due to their marital problems Gerges became the prime suspect in his wife’s shooting. However, there wasn’t sufficient evidence to charge him.

  Here was a classic case of tunnel vision. The investigators had not been open-minded to all possible suspects, nor had they followed up on all alibis. Even after we shared the information we had on the Mills murder and our view that Paul Offer was a suspect in both it and the Gerges shooting, they remained adamant that Mark Gerges was the prime suspect.

  Given that we believed Offer had already killed or attempted to kill two witnesses in the boat insurance fraud court case it was crucial that we find him before he attacked other witnesses. Several Sydney addresses known to be connected with Offer were put under surveillance until we found out that Offer and his family had left Sydney in April 1997, five months earlier, and were believed to have headed north. The reverse call charge records on Ronald Mills’s home telephone showed a call from Queensland on the evening of 29 September (two days after his death). This phone number was traced to a public phone box outside the Dress Circle Motor Village near the Gold Coast.

  On Friday 10 October Detective Sergeant John Thompson, the officer in charge of Strike Force Coldwater, and another investigator from Kogarah were dispatched to the Gold Coast. At the Dress Circle Motor Village, the manager gave them a list of the names of everyone who had been there on 29 September 1997. Paul Offer was on the list. He was still living in the Motor Village with his de facto wife and children, in the Isuzu motorhome. The Queensland police were able to organise surveillance on him.

  On 15 October 1997 they told us that the family appeared to be leaving town. It was time to act. The Homicide Unit gave Ange and me permission to drive the 800 kilometres to Brisbane to assist the Strike Force Coldwater investigators. It was more practical for us to take a car rather than fly; there were now four NSW investigators in Queensland and we didn’t want to burden the Queensland police by using their resources. On arrival we met with the Queensland Armed Holdup Unit, who were helping us.

  During the surveillance operation Sandra MacDonald, Paul Offer’s de facto wife, agreed to come back to the police station with me to be interviewed. During the interview she provided alibis for Offer for the shooting of Nagwa Gerges and the murder of Ronald Mills, relying on diary entries she had made. Sandra told me that Offer had been with her at the Gold Coast on 15 February 1997, the day Nagwa Gerges was shot. On 27 September, the day Ronald Mills was killed, she claimed that Offer had been looking after their children while she was at work.

  Paul Offer was also interviewed. He denied any involvement in the murder of Ronald Mills, stating that on Friday 26 September he had held a birthday party at the caravan park and recalled the caretaker fixing the barbecue they were to use for the party. On the night of the Mills murder, 27 September, he claimed he’d driven his wife to work at a hospital in Brisbane, where she was a nurse. Offer also denied possession of any firearms or ammunition, and denied knowing Ronald Mills.

  When we followed up on Paul Offer’s alibi at the Dress Circle Motor Village, a witness showed us a diary entry that noted Offer had driven his car to Sydney being absent from the motor village for two nights, returning on Sunday 28 September (the day after the shooting of Ronald Mills). Later, the investigation team located a hitchhiker who told us that Offer had picked him up on the way back from Sydney to Brisbane on 28 September. The manager of the Motor Village did remember fixing the barbecue for a birthday party, but it was for someone else’s birthday two weeks before the date Offer had given. Video evidence showed Offer had been present at that birthday party on the 14 September, not 26 September as he had declared in his interview. We also found that Sandra MacDonald had taken taxis to and from work on 26 and 27 September, yet on 27 September a storage unit leased in her name at Kennards Hire in Kirrawee south of Sydney had been accessed twice by someone using the required key and code number.

  Unfortunately, at the time of the interviews, we did not have enough evidence to charge either Offer or Sandra MacDonald.

  We wanted Crime Scene to do a thorough forensic search of Offer’s Ford Falcon car and Isuzu motorhome, to be video recorded. This could take days, even with numerous Forensics staff. Because it was late at night and not enough Forensics staff were available we decided to conduct this search the following day, Thursday 16 October. Offer and Sandra MacDonald were allowed to leave after we organised surveillance on them. They were travelling with children so we did not believe they could get far without our knowledge.

  In the boot of the Falcon the following morning we found some very interesting items: a silencer capable of being threaded onto a 9mm pistol; a gun-cleaning kit that bank records showed had been bought on Offer’s credit card; a sawn-off shotgun; five crossbow bolts with red and black vanes similar to those used in the shooting of Nagwa Gerges; a national sports shooting brochure; Mark Chapman’s business card and a blank card with the Gerges’ address written on it. There was also a folder containing the brief of evidence for the forthcoming fraud case, including all the witness statements. A number of sticky notes were attached to the statements, each one with the name of the witness written on it. There was a cross under Ronald Mills’s name.

  In the motorhome we located another disturbing exhibit. This was a black zipped Commando brand bag that contained a Luger 9mm self-loading pistol in a brown holster with a silencer fitting, seven rounds of Norinco brand 9mm ammunition in the magazine fitted to the Luger, more 9mm Norinco brand ammunition, a shoulder holster, a full balaclava with eye and mouth holes, black sunglasses and a black bum bag. There was also a laser sight with mounting suitable for attachment to a crossbow, black plastic zip ties (useful for tying up prisoners), a piece of diamond-saw wire with swivels and finger rings in each end, suitable for garrotting, and a red-handled stainless steel diver’s knife in a sheath. We called this the assassin’s kit.

  We believed we had found the weapon used to kill Ronald Mills, but to prove the murder charge we needed to have the bullet, currently held in evidence in New South Wales, analysed against the Luger 9mm pistol. One of the Strike Force Coldwater investigators flew with the bullet to Queensland … and bingo. After test firing was carried out, the murder weapon was confirmed.

  Besides the assassin’s kit we found a photograph of Mark Gerges and his family, the home and business addresses of Mark Gerges on a piece of paper, information about gun laws in Queensland, two of Ronald Mills’s Blakehurst Marina business cards, documentary proof that Offer had been in Sydney on 19 September and a Visa card cash advance slip for $8000 dated 25 September.

  Paul Offer had claimed he did not know Ronald Mills but his mobile telephone records showed he had made many calls to Ronald Mills’s workplace, and had called his home six days before the murder. He had made a further seven calls to the Sydney numbers of people named R Mills taken from the White Pages. Police contacted all these numbers, ensuring that their owners were safe and well. One person recalled that a man with an Irish accent asked for someone called Mills. In the motorhome, there was another interesting stas
h: 81 live rounds of 9mm Norinco ammunition wrapped in plastic, two boxes other containing 97 live rounds of 9mm Chinese Manufacture brand ammunition and a 9mm magazine loaded with seven live rounds of 9mm Norinco brand ammunition.

  All this, of course, was very damning for Paul Offer. However, the surveillance police trailing Paul Offer had lost him; the family dog was found dead in a nearby park, butchered with a knife, and though we found Sandra MacDonald and the children with the hire car, Offer had fled. We needed to find him, and fast, before he left the country.

  We knew he had been in contact with the owner of a large catamaran and were worried that Offer would try and find the owner, dispose of him/her, and take off with the boat to escape police. Perhaps this sounds a little melodramatic, but we were dealing with a man we strongly believed had killed one witness and tried to kill another over a boat fraud, and now he knew he was wanted for murder. We could not take unnecessary risks: Offer’s potential to inflict major damage was too catastrophic.

  From Brisbane I telephoned the owner of the catamaran, Mark, who told me he was moored in Sydney. He said he and his wife Katherine had met Paul Offer several times after Offer realised their boat was for sale and Offer had told them he wanted to buy the boat to sail back to Ireland. After some negotiation they eventually agreed on a sale price of nearly $500,000. Offer turned up to the boat with signed transfer forms but Mark had wanted to wait until settlement before handing the boat over. No money, no boat.

  Several times Offer turned up and gave reasons for not having the money. Once he showed a photograph of hundreds of dollars in a briefcase (this photo was located in the motorhome). Mark and Katherine were becoming a little concerned, especially as Offer had asked them to go to the boat alone one night, promising to hand over the money. He had specifically asked them not to have their adult son with them. They also worried about the black bag he always carried but he told them it contained his dive suit, though they did not think the bag looked full enough. Chances are that bag was the assassin’s kit.