by I. J. Fenn
Michael: Have you ever bashed someone for his car?
French: Yeah, we took this cunt’s car that we killed … Man, I’ve belted heaps. I’ve belted one cunt three times, mate. Three different times.
Michael: Three different times?
French: I swear to god, mate. He had a wig … The last time I belted him I took his wig off and I chucked it in a tree … Heaps way up high, chucked it in there, and before I took his wig off I pissed on it. I picked it up with a stick and I put it on his head … He was down on his knees, ‘Don’t hit me any more …’ Took off his wig and pissed in it. Done heaps of fuckin’ sick things, man, heaps bad … mate, it’s a sport. It’s fuckin’ funny … Tied a cunt up one night with fuckin’ Telecom wire … And we come back and about three-quarters of an hour later he was still there. So we belted him again. We said, ‘You move, you cunt, we’ll find ya.’ Never fuckin’ moved, mate. We said, ‘You should’ve fuckin’ gone, you dickhead. How could we find ya?’ Heaps bad. … Mate, this cunt, we got him, okay? We didn’t hit him, we just got him on the ground and we said, ‘What are you?’ And first he said he was a copper … We said, ‘Show us your badge, cunt,’ and he goes, ‘Oh, I haven’t got it, it’s at home.’ I went fuckin’ Whack! ‘What are you, cunt?’ Said, ‘An ambulance driver.’ So I fuckin’ cracked him again and I said, ‘What are you, cunt?’ What are you? And he goes, ‘I’m a taxi driver.’ … bang, bang, bang … lied to me three times … and he goes, ‘I’m a homosexual.’ Fuck. Boot. Oh, heaps bad, mate … Stresses me out how they lie to me all the time. Can’t handle it.
• • •
The detectives of the Homicide Unit had hoped that French would incriminate someone in connection with either the death of John Russell or the disappearance of Ross Warren, especially in light of his admission regarding the throwing of a victim off a cliff at Bondi. However, as Constable Susan Emmett stated in her official report on 9May 1991, insufficient evidence was obtained by the use of the listening device for the arrest of any persons at that time.
ii
The following week the police were approached by two women, the mother and daughter who had named Merlyn McGrath as being involved in gay bashings in general, and in the murder of Ross Warren in particular.
The older woman told police that McGrath claimed that her gang had moved Ross Warren’s car ‘from one place to another’ without giving specific locations. (This seemed unlikely for a number of reasons: firstly, when the car was found, the doors were locked and it would be unlikely that a group of thieves and murderers would bother to lock the doors when they’d finished doing whatever they were doing with the car. Secondly, over 70 dollars were found inside the car as well as a credit card. Would young, uneducated thieves leave ready cash lying around rather than taking it with them? It seemed likely that McGrath was lying, boasting of an involvement in something that was pure fiction). The daughter, however, believed that McGrath was telling the truth: why would she brag about something as serious as murder? The younger girl couldn’t conceive of any reason why even a braggart like McGrath would want to be associated with something that could have potentially devastating repercussions. McGrath told her that she, McGrath, and her friends were on their way to a club in Kings Cross when they ‘happened to find him [Warren] and his boyfriend. “We got him, took him somewhere and bashed him.”’ Again, the lack of specific detail regarding the location cast doubt in the detectives’ minds on the credibility of McGrath’s claims. Also, if McGrath and her friends were on their way to ‘Les Girls Club’ in Kings Cross, as she claimed, they would have had to have arrived there well after three o’clock in the morning, if Philip was telling the truth about he and Warren parting company at around 2.30am. The police were inclined to believe Philip: although it was possible that McGrath and her gang could have been going to the club at that hour, it was unlikely.
Which was not to say that they didn’t believe that McGrath was capable of being involved in such acts. In September 1989, Constable Robert Boeg filled out an Information Report on Merlyn Maree McGrath – also known as Charlie – in which he names McGrath as a person of interest who ‘associates with several Lebanese persons who regularly assault homosexuals’ and that she and her associates ‘have assaulted the missing person Ross Warren’. Unfortunately, Constable Boeg doesn’t disclose his source of information but says that he/she was a friend of McGrath who had been in Sydney when McGrath was bragging about the incident.
Interestingly, the State Intelligence Group stamp almost obliterates the name ‘Bowditch’ handwritten at the bottom of the report. Did Detective Sergeant Bowditch receive this information? He certainly seems not to have acted upon it if he had.
iii
Was McGrath lying? Was she terrified of having done something so heinous that she had to tell someone to share the burden of her guilt? Or was she nothing more than a sad little girl who had to invent stories that would give her meaningless life substance?
And French? Was he also a pathetic braggart who, having been involved in one murder, sought to increase his status in prison by claiming others? Had he and Morgan heard rumours – about Ross Warren’s killing, about William Allen’s killing – and adopted the acts as their own, boasting about them in the vaguest terms because, in reality, they knew little or nothing of what had actually occurred?
The police of the Homicide Squad remained open-minded, recognising that they hadn’t enough hard evidence to make an arrest (even if McGrath and French were telling the truth, there were no specific details or recorded admissions to be damning enough to gain a conviction). So they waited. They kept digging for more information while they hoped for a breakthrough, for someone to come forward with the critical piece of the puzzle. After all, it wasn’t unknown for a disenchanted gang member to give up his former mates following a dispute over trivialities.
And a possible breakthrough of sorts could have happened on 5 July 1991 if a report of an assault in Darlinghurst Road, Paddington, had found its way to Detective Sergeant McCann and his team rather than languishing on a NSW Police facts sheet until Steve Page discovered it 10 years later. Had McCann been made aware of events involving the bashing of Ivan Smith at the time, it’s even possible that the British tourist Brian Hagland might not have been murdered five years after the Paddington assault.
• • •
It was decided that French should be interviewed in Keelong in an attempt to elicit an admission from him in relation to other offences against gay males. Detective Sergeants Phillips and Saunders of Redfern made the trip. Phillips had been involved in the investigation into the murder of Richard Johnson and was part of the team that gained convictions against the eight perpetrators. He had dealt with French before.
This time, however, on 12June 1991, he was to be thwarted. French declined to be interviewed after denying any involvement in anything. Especially anything against gay males. It would seem that he was prepared to swagger before his peers, painting graphic pictures of himself as the ‘hard man’, telling lurid stories of his tough-guy exploits against defenceless victims, but felt he had to hide behind a sullen legality when confronted by authority, by people who weren’t afraid of him.
Not so, Ann Pascoe. The young social worker had heard about French’s interview and two days later spoke to him.
‘I heard a couple of cops came to see you the other day,’ she said. ‘What did they want?’ They were sitting near the pool table, a few other inmates nearby. Pascoe spoke quietly enough that they wouldn’t be overheard.
‘You know the other murders?’
‘Yeah?’
‘They came to see if I knew anything.’
‘Do you?’
‘No.’
‘Are you sure? Do they want you to give evidence or something?’ It was 7.30pm and Pascoe had to pause occasionally as people walked by. ‘Which one are they talking about? There were five or six, weren’t there?’
‘Yeah. You know the poof that was killed a year before I wa
s arrested? Him.’
‘Did you have anything to do with it?’
For the first time French smiled. ‘No,’ he said, unconvincingly.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yeah, I know but I’m not telling.’
Pascoe asked if he couldn’t get a reduction of his sentence if he gave information, but French told her the police who had interviewed him had said he couldn’t. She asked if it wouldn’t be better to give information anyway, irrespective of reducing his sentence, as he’d given evidence in the Johnson murder trial and that resulted in a lighter jail term. But French claimed that it had made no difference: his sentence had already been handed down when he gave evidence.
‘And, anyway,’ he said, ‘the coppers stuff you around too much.’
Five days later Ann Pascoe approached French again.
‘Adam, you know what we were talking about the other night? Well, I spoke to a friend of mine who is a detective and sort of gave him some details – but no names – and he said if you gave useful information you could probably get a reduction in your sentence.’
‘I can’t.’
‘Why not?’
Because the police who’d interviewed him had said so, he said.
‘But you didn’t have anything to do with it, so you could,’ Pascoe argued.
‘No, I don’t want to, anyway.’
After each conversation Pascoe made detailed notes of what had been said and, on 27June, she made a formal statement to Detective Constable Griffin at Warilla Police Station.
Was this more of the same from French? Boasting, playing the ‘big man’, trying to invent an aura of importance for himself? Or did he genuinely know something about ‘the poof’ who had been murdered a year earlier? And if he did have information, did it concern Ross Warren or John Russell? It seemed likely that he was referring to the Warren case, but it seems equally likely that he was doing nothing more than ‘big-noting’ himself yet again. Ann Pascoe was a 25-year-old female at the time of their conversations: most inmates would have found it difficult not to try to impress her.
On the other hand, there was something … Pascoe’s finding it relevant to mention French’s having smiled when denying he’d had anything to do with the incident … his claim that he knew but wasn’t saying … If it wasn’t all hot air, all French playing the hard man …
Sergeant McCann applied for warrants to employ more listening devices and enlisted the cooperation of Dean Howard to engage French in further conversations in which he might offer up useful information.
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A conversation between Dean Howard and Adam French, recorded on 5 July 1991 at Minda Training Centre where French was under the impression that he’d been sent for reassessment. They are part of a work detail charged with cleaning rooms.
Howard: Has your gran, has your grandma been down to see ya?
French: Yeah. She came down on the weekend.
Howard: What’s the visiting hours like down there?
French: Oh, it’s alright. You got Sunday and Monday nights and stuff like that.
Howard: How many visits a week?
French: Three.
Howard: You been here before?
French: No.
Howard: Alex is up Mount Penang.
French: Is he? … Was he in here?
Howard: Yeah. He got stood over here. Yeah, this little fella … took his shoes off him.
French: Fair dinkum?
Howard: Yeah.
French: What have things been like here, Dean?
Howard: Oh, it’s a lot better than jail. Heaps better. I’d rather stay in here than go to jail.
They talk about other members of their gang convicted of the Johnson murder, commenting on how they looked the last time they saw them.
Howard: Ron Morgan got bashed here.
French: Morgan? Where’s he now?
Howard: Yasma. He got bashed. Got bashed down Patto ’cause he was big-noting himself ’cause he was on murder … Did you hear what sentence they got?
French: Morgan?
Howard: And Alex. Pretty long, eh? How long did you get?
French: Me? I got four-and-a-half.
Howard: So you have to do four-and-a-half years?
French: Yeah.
Howard: Did you get a parole period or…
French: Yeah.
Howard: What’s Manuel get?
French: I think he got five-and-a-half.
Howard: Fuck.
Howard relates a story about how the inmates were ‘flashed’ by a female worker and how one of those convicted of the rape and murder of Janine Balding had missed ‘the show’.
Howard: Ronny Morgan got smashed in bad. He had to get his appendix out … Trying to big-note himself and he couldn’t back up his words. Like, he got smashed bad. Same bloke that smashed Ronny Morgan wanted to go at me … I said, whatever you want, mate. And when I seen him, he goes, No, you’re alright, just. He reckons I’m fridging up. I said I don’t fridge up, it’s just the way I walk. So, real cool after that. He was, he’s heaps big, man, and fuck … Big Tongan bloke, he was … You got some funny guys in here, man, heaps and heaps good guys, some heaps gronks … Did ya know I was in here?
French: I knew you were in Minda but I thought you were in Patto.
Howard: What did you think when ya first saw me? … Did ya think I was gonna hit ya?
French: Yeah, I was expectin’ it.
Howard: It’s over and done with, mate. You got off better than me, anyway. Put it that way. You got your what – four-and-a-half years, I’m going ten.
French: Ten?
Howard: Or maybe nine. Because the judge is happy I wasn’t involved as much as Alex and Ron Morgan … You see, the Crown tried to prove I had something to do with the phone calls – which I never … The judge … he’s happy that I only had a little bit in it.
French: Like I say, like I done that shit in court against youse, the prosecutor came down and seen me. I thought I was going back to court for some shit … I could’ve been trialled for withholding evidence or some shit.
Howard: Withholding evidence?
French: No…
Howard: Contempt of court.
French: Yeah, that’s it.
The talk turns to sport, to how they’re going to play for clubs when they ‘get out’, about how good they all were before they were locked up. The players they knew, the players they’ve shared punishments with. How some of those players have been discharged and are on ‘the outside’ now.
Howard: Yeah, he was here. He’s up Mount Penang now. Couple of lads. Matthew Davis, do you know Matthew Davis? The bloke from Bondi? He killed that, threw that poofter off the cliff with them two other lads?
French: Yeah, I heard that. Y’know we were gonna get the crap for that?
Howard: Were we?
French: Yeah.
Howard: They got caught, didn’t they? Them two blokes dobbed ’em in.
French: They tried to put that one on us. That one, there’s been two at Bondi … They tried to put the other one, the year before at Alex’s [Alexandria Park] on us.
Howard: That’s the Allen one, eh?
French: Yeah.
Howard: Cops seen you ’bout that?
French: Yeah.
Howard: What’d they say?
French: Didn’t know anything about it or, y’know any of the boys know anything at all? Not me. If you know anything about it or if you’re a part of it, you plead immunity for it. Said, no, I didn’t know nothin’ about it. That was Ben, wasn’t it?
Howard: Ben? Think so … Who’d you hear it off?
French: I heard it a long time ago.
Howard: ’Cause I’ve heard it but I don’t know if it was true.
French: Yeah, I think that’s the one where Ben stabbed him … That’s the one. Oh, mate. They drove all the way down from Sydney. I said, nah. Got up and walked out. Sat there. That’s it.
Howard: That’s mad. Did you see the Hin
ch programme? Had a mad Hinch programme about it … They’ve had our one on there, a recent one … They have, they had my name on it, Alex’s name on it … they brought up the ones have been solved then the ones that haven’t been solved, the five other ones…