by James Morton
Another of New South Wales’s high-profile policemen became a member of the Armed Hold-Up Squad in May 1974, and was present when the police shot and killed bank robber and murderer Philip Western on 29 June 1976 at a fibro house in Avoca Beach on the Central Coast. Earlier in the week, New Zealand-born and university-educated Western, also known as ‘Mad Dog’ Danny McMillan, had shot and killed bank manager Lyn Callaghan of the South Parramatta branch of the Bank of New South Wales. In 1965 Western had been given nine years in New Zealand for bank robbery and during his sentence had managed to burn down much of Mount Eden Prison. Under the generous Australian bail laws of the time, he had been given bail for two armed robberies in New South Wales on 24 May 1976 and had failed to appear at the next court hearing. The Special Weapons and Operations Section had him in their sights and as one biographer wrote, ‘armed to the teeth with high powered rifles and Remington pump action shotguns known as “Alley cleaners” they demolished the house with gunfire’. Western ended up ‘as riddled as Swiss cheese’.
On 19 February 1978, in the last two weeks of a nine-year sentence for armed robbery, Leslie ‘Butchy’ Burns, also known as Lawrence John Byrne and once a mate of Neddy Smith, had fraudulently arranged a day’s work release for himself from Silverwater Correctional Complex. He certainly worked that day but it was not work of which the authorities would have approved. Along with Allan Ray Markham and Robert Frank Hewitt, he robbed the Sydney Junior Leagues Club, grabbing $60 000. The police had been warned, and Burns was killed when an officer opened fire and shot him through his car’s rear window in a chase.
The coroner ruled that the officer had ‘held grave fear for [his] life and the lives of others’. Markham and Hewitt pleaded guilty to a variety of charges, and received fifteen and fourteen years respectively. According to Abo Henry, another associate of Smith, he and Smith later robbed the club. However, it is possible Smith and two others, who did not include Henry, carried out the job.
New Zealand-born Tony Edwards, or Robin Horn, was in and out of Australia in the 1970s, then was shot dead by a policeman in April 1985, while on the run after escaping from Long Bay on 19 October the previous year. During that time, he was linked to five armed robberies, in one of which a cashier was shot in the arm. He was staying in Bankstown and, after a tip-off, police surrounded the house as he was about to enter it. He reached for a pistol and was shot.
If it is possible to feel any sympathy for armed robbers, one who might garner some is David Lawrence Hunter, younger brother of Sydney wrestler Ray Hunter, who police shot and killed on 12 April 1978. At ten o’clock that morning, David Hunter collected $29 000 when he robbed the Bank of New South Wales branch at Waterworks Road, Ashgrove, north-west of Brisbane’s CBD. In the previous twelve months, he had robbed three other banks, making an appointment to see the manager, and then tying up the staff after forcing the manager at gunpoint to bring them into his office.
This time, the police had been alerted when he rang the CBC Bank, which was duly staked out. At the last minute, however, Hunter changed banks, and after robbing the Bank of New South Wales, fled in a Chevrolet Impala. One of the staff managed to wriggle out of their bonds and chased after him on a motorcycle. The police were called and when, two hours later, the police saw the Impala in Moggill Road, Hunter fired shots at them. He lost control of the car, crashed and then fled on foot in Duke Street. A house-to-house yard search followed and, when the lawn locker at one of the houses was opened, Hunter fired. The officer fired back, killing him with a single shot to the head. Hunter, who owned two coffee bars in Brisbane, was well liked by his neighbours and cared for a former girlfriend’s four offspring. His bank robberies were believed to have netted him more than $100 000, which he was using to support the children. In October 1978 his death was ruled justifiable homicide.
Fifty-two-year-old Malcolm Robert Bell was known as ‘the Bad Wig’ Bandit because of the ill-fitting ladies’ wig and sunglasses he wore during his raids, and also as the ‘Friday Bandit’. Bell’s criminal career spanned twenty-eight years, and he had served twenty-two years in New South Wales and the Northern Territory before being transferred to Queensland, where he was released in 2000. On 11 October 2001 police shot him dead shortly after he robbed the General Post Office in Brisbane, armed with a semi-automatic.
Bell had escaped into the GPO laneway between Elizabeth and Queen Streets, and ran into two plainclothes constables who were part of ‘Operation Matchpoint’, which had been staking him out. He dropped his briefcase of money and a sawn-off shotgun, then produced a pistol, which he pointed at the officers. Inspector Hanbridge described the incident tersely: ‘This male person has been in possession of two firearms and after this confrontation this male person was shot by the police officer and the male person is now deceased.’ In May 2006 a coroner ruled that Bell’s shooting had been self-defence.
It is odd how criminals will sometimes panic when there is absolutely no need. One for whom this loss of nerve proved fatal was Ian William Turner, the so-called ‘Country Bandit’, who posed as a Telecom technician to do jobs. On 20 June 1998 Turner, while on his way to commit yet another robbery, this time near Bendigo, was shot and killed by a police officer on whom he had pulled a gun. Turner had for many years worked as a coordinator at Channel 12 before he embarked on his second and, for the time being, more lucrative career. At the time of his death, he was wanted for robberies that had netted him between $100 000 and $200 000 in the preceding three years.
Turner died over a possible speeding ticket. About 9.45 a.m. Senior Constable Wayne Sherwell, on traffic duty, pointed his speed gun at a Mazda sedan near Kooreh, 15 kilometres from St Arnaud on the Bendigo Road, and it registered 128 kilometres per hour. Sherwell stopped the car and the driver said he was Philip Rodger Gould, a vet, from Bendigo. He was not carrying his licence. So what?
As Sherwell was writing the ticket, Turner pushed a sawn-off .22 rifle in his ribs and took the policeman’s revolver, telling him to place his hands on the roof of the car. Instead, the very brave Sherwell managed to grab at both guns as he fought for them. Now a fine had escalated into a potential prison sentence. Sherwell won the fight but, instead of going quietly, Turner refused to be handcuffed. Sherwell retreated to the police car to radio for back-up, and now Turner grabbed another sawn-off shotgun from his car and pointed it at the officer. Sherwell fired twice—one went through the windscreen of the police car, and the second into Turner’s temple, killing him instantly.
It took six years for Sherwell to be officially vindicated, when Coroner Hal Hallenstein spoke of his ‘exemplary restraint and self-control’. He eventually received the Victoria Police Valour Award for bravery.
In the mid- and late 1980s, the Melbourne police and the underworld were at each other’s throats. This was often with fatal, and sometimes tragic, results. From 1987 to 1989 the police shot dead eleven suspects. And the underworld ultimately retaliated in a cowardly fashion.
In the six months to April 1989, the dead included Mark Militano, a member of a group of criminals from the Flemington–Ascot Vale area that specialised in armed robberies. On 25 March 1987 members of the Armed Robbery Squad shot him six times outside his Kensington flat when they went to question him. One bullet lodged in the back of his neck as he was running away, and the coroner found that he had been pointing a gun over his shoulder before he was shot. Santo Mercuri, a member of Militano’s team, survived but died in prison. He was convicted of an armed robbery on an Armaguard van on 11 July 1988, when $33 000 was stolen and security guard Dominik Hefti was shot dead. A fitness fanatic feared by other inmates, Mercuri died in Barwon Prison, following a heart attack on 22 July 2000.
In perhaps the most celebrated case, on 11 October 1988 Graeme Jensen left a hardware store in Narre Warren, an east Melbourne suburb, and climbed into his Commodore. Members of the Armed Robbery Squad approached and told him not to move. Instead, he accelerated. The officers opened fire and Jensen was shot in the back of the head.
By the time his car crashed into a power pole, he was already dead. At the inquest, there was evidence that the police saw him pick up a weapon and they fired to protect themselves. A sawn-off bolt-action shotgun was produced, which they said had been found in the car. Jensen’s friends and relations would not accept this evidence.
There is no doubt that Jensen, then thirty-three and described as something of a ladykiller, was an armed robber by profession. His criminal career began early—when he was fourteen, he and four others used coathangers to pull six fur coats, valued at $2468, through a letterbox opening in the door of a Melbourne shop. At fifteen he became one of Australia’s youngest bank robbers when he stole $1363 from the National Australia Bank in Fitzroy. His arresting officer left a note on his file: ‘This lad, in my opinion, will in the future become a very active criminal. He requires firm handling.’ This was followed by imprisonment for housebreaking; and, when he was twenty-three, three more charges of armed robbery, this time in Canberra, which netted $70 000. A note by the arresting officer on this occasion read:
Offender is a very dangerous type of person who, according to his girlfriends and other persons, always slept with his shotgun loaded under his bed. When arrested also had the weapon fully loaded in his possession. Warning, will finish shooting a policeman or some other person he has a dislike to if given an opportunity. Treat with caution.
This time, Jensen received ten years and six months, with an eight-year pre-parole.
He escaped from custody and robbed yet another bank. Released in 1987, he had, said the police, resumed his profession. At the time of his death, he was suspected of being part of a team that specialised in bank robberies in the inner western suburbs, and the police wished to question him over the Hefti killing.
Around 4 a.m. on the day after Jensen’s death, a newsagent on the way to open his shop saw a Commodore parked in Walsh Street, South Yarra. It was empty but the lights were on, the doors open and the windows smashed. He telephoned the police, and Constables Steven Tynan and Damian Eyre were sent to investigate. While they were examining the damage, they were attacked. Tynan was shot in the head at almost point-blank range; and Eyre, who had had an instant’s notice of the attack and tried to struggle with the gunman, was shot three times. The double killing of the police officers was the first in Victoria since Ned Kelly’s gang shot three officers near Mansfield, north-east of Melbourne, in 1878.
The police search that followed the double shooting was, not unexpectedly, massive, with the Victorian Government posting a $200 000 reward. With a hundred police drafted to comb the underworld, the crime rate dropped. One of the men whose name came into the frame was Jedd Houghton, known to be a friend of Jensen. He was traced to Bendigo, where he was staying in a caravan park with his girlfriend. A listening device was planted, which Houghton discovered. The police, listening in before he dismantled it, realised their cover was blown and moved to arrest him. He was still in the caravan park when the police opened fire, and two shotgun blasts hit him. He died instantly, and his friends believed that he had been shot in reprisal for Walsh Street.
Seventeen-year-old Jason Ryan, an accomplished little thief and a nephew of Dennis Allen, scion of the notorious Pettingill family, had been convicted of a drug-dealing offence and decided cooperation was the best way towards daylight. He became an informant and named Gary Abdallah as involved in the Walsh Street shootings. On 22 February 1989 Abdallah went to see the police with his solicitor, and was told all they had against him was rumours. Six weeks later, on 9 April, he was killed when police, not connected with the Walsh Street inquiry, shot him. They said he had threatened them with a firearm. The weapon turned out to be an imitation one and, once again, friends of the man who had been shot refused to accept the official version. Abdallah died after forty days in a coma.
Jason Ryan, it appeared, had been trying to deflect interest from himself but, on 31 October, the police arrested him over the Walsh Street attack. They also arrested two of matriarch Kath Pettingill’s sons, Victor George Peirce and Trevor Pettingill, as well as Ryan’s best friend, Anthony Leigh Farrell, and Peter David McEvoy, who lodged with Ryan’s mother. The police named Houghton as the sixth man involved. All those arrested were acquitted.
Later, when a man from a different team was arrested, it became clear that Jensen and his firm had not been involved in the murder of Dominik Hefti that had begun the chain of events. The actual robbers are now alleged to have included Jason and Lewis Moran, both killed in the long-running Melbourne gang war of the 1990s, and Santo Mercuri.
By the time of his death in a police shoot-out, 35-year-old Turkish-born Hakki Bahadir ‘Tim’ Atahan, who had arrived in Australia in 1970, was thought to have robbed at least seventeen Sydney banks, netting more than $175 000. He did this in just under nine months. Atahan first lived in the western suburbs and opened a takeaway in Parramatta Road in Auburn. He was a heavy gambler and, as a result, lost his business, and his marriage broke up. He then became a cab driver. After turning to crime, Atahan lived in style in a sixteenth-floor Manly apartment and had a number of sports cars.
His robbery career ended on the afternoon of 31 January 1984. Around 3.15 p.m., after robbing two other banks, Atahan was chased into the Commonwealth Bank in George Street by police and staff from the two banks. Undaunted, he fired a shot and demanded to be given all the $50 notes the bank had. By now the Commonwealth Bank had been surrounded.
Atahan took the staff hostage, believing he was now in a position to bargain. Over the next two hours, the police did try to negotiate with him and he told the manager, Graeme Stewart, ‘It’s just like the movies’, a reference to the Sidney Lumet film Dog Day Afternoon. Around a quarter to six, using five of the staff as a human shield, he walked out of the bank’s front doors and, hijacking a Datsun car, bundled the hostages inside, forcing Stewart to drive.
Followed by police marksmen in a chase-cum-surveillance involving thirty-nine police cars, a police helicopter and four Water Police launches, after two hours he freed one hostage and collected his 23-year-old girlfriend, telling her he was doing it all for his daughter. He was finally trapped on the Spit Bridge, which connects the northern suburbs of Mosman and Seaforth, during one of its regular raisings to allow boats with long masts to pass beneath it. As Detective Constable Stephen Canellis approached, Atahan shot him and was himself then immediately shot and killed. Canellis survived the bullet, which entered his face and lodged in his chest.
Although generally the courts have had little sympathy with criminals injured during robberies, the Victorian courts have ruled that injuries to criminals are relevant to their sentences, but have declined to say to what extent. However, on 7 April 1971, dismissing the appeal of a man named Owens who had blown part of his foot off and argued that should lead to a reduction in his sentence, the New South Wales Court of Appeal was much firmer:
It is, of course, rather sad to think that this man suffered this injury but it was the luck of the game. He indulged in a dangerous practice and got the worst of it.
Sometimes victims will fight back and, occasionally, triumph. In the late summer in 2000, a man had visited Paul Visentin’s shop in Nerang on the Gold Coast, saying he was a prison warder and wanted to buy a bracelet for his daughter. It seemed to Visentin and his wife, Maxine, that the man was more interested in talking about a robbery that had taken place at the shop seven years earlier. Visentin had been explaining the new security he had had put in until Maxine pressed his foot, indicating he had said quite enough.
The earlier robbery had taken place on 18 November 1993, when Visentin was out of the shop, and Maxine and their 20-year-old son, Hayden, were minding the business. In burst Mark Thomas Noble and Paul Francis Verheyden yelling, ‘Don’t fucking move!’ and ‘Get on the fucking ground!’. Instead, Hayden Visentin picked up a shotgun and fired. Verheyden, who had a previous conviction for armed robbery, was badly injured, and had his colon removed and a colostomy fashioned. He and Noble each received
four years. Verheyden argued he should have a lesser sentence because of his injuries, and Noble argued he should have a reduction as well, because he had no previous convictions for robbery. The Court of Appeal disagreed.
It seems that the soi-disant prison warder was John Stephen Cole. When, just after 3.30 p.m. on 24 May 2000, he, Brett Randall Griffith and Peter Anthony Knox robbed Paul Visentin’s shop, they found him in an intransigent mood. The trio blasted their way into his shop, firing hollow-point cartridges from an M-I carbine at head height. Undeterred, Visentin fired back with a shotgun he kept hidden under the counter, killing Knox as he was grabbing jewellery. The remaining men fled, leaving DNA in the shop, on the getaway vehicle and on dumped balaclavas.
Queensland has generally a robust view of the rights of shopkeepers and householders to defend themselves against robbers, and Visentin did not face any charges. Convicted of attempted murder, Cole and Griffith received twenty years apiece. They were refused leave to appeal.
In a home invasion in June 2011, four masked men who were said to be from Sydney raided the home of Kane Cook, in Gilston, Queensland. One invader, Victorian career criminal George Gioiello, was shot in the leg with his own gun. His femoral artery was severed, and he died in the street, 50 metres away. Cook was charged with his manslaughter, and it was two years before the DPP offered no evidence. At the time of the robbery, veteran lawyer Bill Potts, echoing many people’s opinion, said of his client, ‘he is the real victim’.
Home Invasions
15
A relatively new trend in robberies has been the ‘home invasion’, the worst form of robbery for a victim. It is one thing to be robbed in the workplace or on the street; it is quite another not to be safe in one’s home. Home invasions run the gamut of violence. At the relatively low end is an invasion such as the one by Schapelle Corby’s half-brother, James Kisina, in 2006, which resulted in a beating for the victim. Then there is the horrifying attack on Spiro Grafu, who, with a worker’s compensation payout, had bought himself a small farm near Ballarat. In August 1985 he was tied up, doused with petrol and set on fire. He died two days later.