Unholy Trinity

by Denis Ryan

  The die had been cast. This was no milk run. The puppet master and his assistant made it clear to Day that they had him on toast. In a sense they were exacting some element of revenge. Not for the victims; for them, retribution would never come. But O’Connor and Child wanted to make Day squirm. He was the bastard who had created this problem— bringing the Church into disrepute, and threatening the police force with scandal, shame and the exposure of corruption. Commissions of inquiry. Cops in the witness stand; some frogmarched off to jail. It was bad for business. If only Day had kept his dick in his trousers.

  This would be no easy interview, with the questions prepared and handed to him in advance as Irwin and Barritt had done. O’Connor and Child got out the blowtorch and pliers. Child asked the questions. It was better that way. O’Connor, the dyed-in-the-wool Catholic, might have been inclined to go easy on Day. The record of interview shows that Day did squirm. At first he babbled that his lawyer had instructed him not to answer any questions, but Child and O’Connor made it clear that strategy was not going to wash.

  Child and O’Connor stood over him, and Child gave him the third degree. They put him in his place, made him appreciate that they knew what he’d been up to. They pushed Day to breaking point. They told him they had the corroboration they needed. It was the only time Day started to really sweat.

  Day rounded on his parishioners. He blamed the people he had served for his problems. He referred to one parishioner as a drunk, another as a harlot. There were broken homes and idle, sinful parents, he said. Howden and I had engineered an intricate conspiracy to remove him from Mildura. It was all somebody else’s fault.

  Still, the confession did not come. A psychopath like Day would never throw his hands up. Instinctively, he knew they weren’t going to charge him. He knew they knew about his crimes, but they didn’t want a confession. That would have buggered things right up. So he remained staunch. O’Connor and Child were impressed. But knowing that they knew what he had done was enough. Having his dog collar threatened was a powerful motivator. Day now belonged to them.

  At the end of the interview, the rattled priest asked: ‘Am I still allowed to go on my overseas trip?’

  ‘Monsignor, ten thousand miles from Mildura is the best place for you to be,’ O’Connor said. ‘You can spend the rest of your life overseas as far as I care. If you’re going to come back, make sure it’s not soon.’

  And that was that. Day knew he was going to walk. There would be no further investigations. The smother was almost complete.

  I had a formal interview with O’Connor myself around the same time. Not that it lasted long.

  I was the only fly left in the ointment. The smother would not work if I could not be pulled into line. The bullshit started flying around. I would be accused of moonlighting, because I owned the orchard and made a few quid out of the fruit. My accountant told me I was earning twenty dollars a week out of it, maybe enough to buy a bag of groceries in 1972.

  That was about all they could find, and they couldn’t make even that stick. I had a clean record in the force. Distinctions, chief commissioner’s certificate, thirteen commendatory entries on my file. I was respected and well liked in the community. A group of prominent citizens had written to the chief commissioner, stating that any attempt to transfer me would be ‘tantamount to a condemnation of [my] part in the investigations’. It was only years later that I discovered they had sent the letter, in spite of my urging them not to.

  It was a very nice gesture on the part of these people but it didn’t amount to much.

  O’Connor dug deep but he had nothing. Or almost nothing.

  He summoned me to Melbourne. Irwin had passed the message on—get down to Melbourne, O’Connor wants to see you. Before I was due to go in and prostrate myself before O’Connor, I met a mate of mine at the Transport Branch, across the road from police headquarters. My mate knew O’Connor and his methods. He was a surveillance expert in the Bureau of Criminal Intelligence.

  ‘I’ll give you some mail on O’Connor,’ he told me. ‘Just watch him when you sit down. If his hand goes down to the right and he pulls his second desk drawer open slightly, it will activate a tape recorder. From that time on everything you say will be taped.’

  ‘How do you know that?’ I asked.

  ‘I installed it.’

  There was no waiting in the anteroom for O’Connor. I was called into his office at eleven o’clock sharp, as directed. I stood in front of him.

  ‘Take a seat,’ O’Connor said. The amiable camaraderie he’d shown at my place in Mildura a month before was all gone. I’d knocked him back then. Now it was strictly business, by the numbers. I sat down and watched O’Connor drop his right arm down and pull at his desk drawer before meeting my eye.

  ‘Is this conversation going to be taped?’ I asked.

  ‘No, it’s not,’ he replied in a cold-blooded fashion.

  ‘I advise you now that I do not consent to this interview being taped,’ I told him. ‘If I discover that the interview is taped without my permission, I will seek legal redress.’

  Our eyes locked for a moment before O’Connor closed the drawer. A long silence ensued, then O’Connor cleared his throat.

  ‘I am advising you that you will be charged with failing to complete the outcome of an arrest in your CIB diary.’

  ‘You have got to be joking. There wouldn’t be a detective in the state you couldn’t charge with that. And that includes yourself.’

  ‘That will be all, detective.’

  I got up and walked out. It was a try on, an effort to intimidate me. If I wouldn’t play ball, O’Connor was going to play hardball.

  O’Connor’s report to the chief commissioner was a knockout job, prepared and sent to his office two days after Shilton had posed the question to the government. O’Connor concurred with Superintendent Duffy and Irwin that the ‘evidence is insufficient to prosecute Monsignor Day’. The report was wending its way around the third floor of Russell Street—first to Chief Commissioner Jackson, then Deputy Commissioner Jack Carmichael and Under Secretary Dillon, and finally to Hamer in the parliament.

  On 29 March Barritt and I were called to Russell Street to meet the bigwigs, Jackson and Carmichael.

  Barritt and I waited outside Jackson’s office, glaring at each other. He went in first and closed the door behind him. He emerged about half an hour later, solemn and serious. He walked straight by me.

  It was my turn.

  ‘All right,’ Jackson said, after I sat down. ‘Why can’t you get on with Jim Barritt? What are the problems you’ve got with him?’

  It was hard to know where to begin. I told Jackson and Carmichael that Barritt’s brother Dinny had warned me about him before I transferred to Mildura. I told them about Barritt taking me to see Day on my first day of duty in Mildura, and how Barritt had ranted and raved when I told him about pulling up Day in St Kilda, and how I was concerned that Barritt had breached a confidence in informing Day of my recollections. I told them about Barritt’s inadequacies as a detective.

  I went on for a good ten minutes. Jackson and Carmichael only interrupted me when I mentioned Barritt by name but without noting his rank.

  ‘That’s Detective Sergeant Barritt to you,’ Carmichael tut-tutted.

  ‘Show some respect for your senior officer,’ Jackson admonished.

  ‘He might be my senior officer but he’s a dangerous fool.’

  They let me go on. When I stopped to draw breath Jackson looked up.

  ‘That will be all, detective.’

  Carmichael had his head down and Jackson started scratching away with a pen on a notepad. The meeting was over. I got up and walked out.

  The investigation into Day didn’t get a mention. Jackson and Carmichael had already made up their minds about that. The priest was off the hook. O’Connor had made that problem go away. Priests raping kids was low on their scale of priorities. The issue had been reduced to one of a police station feud between Ba
rritt and me.

  With Day elbowed out of the way, there was no way he’d turn on O’Connor now. He had far too much to lose.

  O’Connor and Child had Barritt banged to rights, just where they wanted him. He’d been put under the microscope over extorting money from the two blokes who’d fallen foul of him over the hot outboard motor. They could bring Barritt before a police disciplinary hearing. He might have been threatened with criminal charges. He would go quietly.

  A few months earlier, when Barritt was in the gun from O’Connor and looking at a transfer, he had solicited half a dozen references from Mildurans. The letters, all in pro forma type, were sent to the chief commissioner. But they didn’t do that pudding-headed bastard any good.

  For O’Connor, Barritt was the crucial figure. If push came to shove, Barritt could prove to be the weak link in the chain. O’Connor knew he’d protected Day and that he had known of Day’s crimes against children. Barritt was a made man in the Catholic Mafia. If Day went down, he could drag Barritt down with him and, if that happened, O’Connor and the Catholic Mafia would all be in the shit. Barritt had to be kept sweet—and he would be.

  Assistant Commissioner Bill Crowley covered for Barritt in a report to Chief Commissioner Jackson, smoothing the waters. The report read in part: ‘Having had the opportunity of examining this file and discussing this matter on several occasions with Chief Superintendent O’Connor and Detective Chief Inspector Child, it is my view that no further action, disciplinary or otherwise, should be taken against Detective Sergeant Barritt. Despite his well known deficiencies, in my opinion Barritt is a completely honest and incorruptible member of the force whose integrity I would accept in any situations [sic]. I sincerely believe that the humiliation that he is undoubtedly suffering is more than sufficient punishment.’

  Barritt did not know he had so many senior officers in his corner. If he had, he would have fought like hell to stay in Mildura.

  Barritt had told O’Connor he didn’t want to go back to Melbourne. He liked it up on the Murray River. If he couldn’t stay at Mildura, was there another job going somewhere on the river?

  There wasn’t, but that didn’t matter. For his silence, cooperation and service beyond the call of duty to the Catholic Mafia, a position was created for him at Echuca, 400 kilometres upstream. It was the VicPol equivalent of the golden parachute. His reputation preceded him.

  And this useless, corrupt policeman, as good as a man short, remained a detective sergeant in the Victoria Police force. A detective mate of mine who was unfortunate enough to be stationed there with him, later told me Barritt was ‘the greatest bastard I’ve ever worked with’.

  Another detective Barritt had worked with gave me a bell when this whole business was blowing up. His wife had been on close terms with Barritt’s wife, Alma.

  ‘I hear you’re having a rough time up there,’ the detective told me on the phone.

  ‘You can say that again,’ I replied.

  ‘This might help you,’ he said. ‘Barritt’s a very strange fish. I was stationed up there years ago with him. His wife told my missus that she’d never seen Jim naked. He used to strip off at night in the bathroom. She told her that he had never consummated the marriage. Never gave his missus one once.’

  ‘I know. He’s an unusual man,’ I told him.

  ‘Well, now you know he’s a bit more unusual than you’d thought.’

  The child pornography in his desk drawer. The complaints from the magistrate, Joe Hayes, that Barritt took unnecessarily lurid statements from young women. Barritt’s friendship with Day. I’m no shrink but there’s enough there for an entire seminar on abnormal psychology.

  Barritt faced disciplinary charges over demanding money from the two truckers. It was the least of his crimes at Mildura. And he walked away with a slap on the wrist. His brother Dinny, the man who had warned me about him, had become a barrister and represented his pudding-headed brother.

  Dinny would go on to become the coroner in the Azaria Chamberlain death. He handed his findings down in 1981. He got it right: the dingo did it. But the media ignored him and so the circus began.

  Jim Barritt—the corrupt detective, covert ASIO operative, embellisher of his war record and bane of my existence— retired from the force after eight more years in Echuca. I never caught sight of him after he left Mildura. One must be thankful for small mercies.

  A former police officer from the other side of the Murray told me that Barritt and some dodgy race track pimp he was knocking around with had tried to rig a horse race at Broken Hill. A ring-in had been planned. Barritt thought the ex-copper might be a willing accomplice but he knocked Barritt back. I don’t know if the ring-in ever took place but I’ve never had a bet at the Broken Hill races just in case. Barritt died in 1997.

  If the smother was going to work, I had to be transferred, too. I knew that when I walked out of Jackson’s office. I’d thought I was facing the prospect of a transfer for the previous few months. The meeting with Jackson and Carmichael merely confirmed it. I had told O’Connor that a transfer back to Melbourne could put my two eldest boys’ health at risk, but that didn’t matter to O’Connor or Jackson or Carmichael.

  If I remained in Mildura, they feared I would continue the investigation into Day. They got that right. I had told O’Connor I could get a hundred statements. I was convinced of that. The further I went with the investigation, the more certain I became. So they had to get me out.

  Carmichael’s report didn’t deal with the investigation of Day at all. It was all brought down to the level of my feud with Barritt. I got hold of a copy of the report many years later. It dealt in large part with the allegations against Barritt and the backhanders he’d demanded over the stolen outboard motor.

  I got a mention for my property and the orchard, from which I made a pittance. Carmichael declared that the ‘nature and scope of this business interest is considered to conflict too sharply with his primary role as a member of the force leading to a situation where his divided interests adversely affect his work performance’.

  A twenty dollar a week business. Neither Carmichael nor Jackson had raised it with me. It was a fit-up. It was the only thing they had and it would never stand up to scrutiny. Just like O’Connor telling me I was going to be charged for failing to make an entry in my detective’s diary. And just like O’Connor’s threat, it came to nothing.

  And finally, Carmichael demonstrated a streak of sympathy, albeit in a backhanded fashion.

  ‘At first sight it would appear unfair to Senior Detective Ryan that he should be directed to transfer, for it was information supplied by him that led to the disclosure of events at Mildura. Nevertheless, as the subsequent inquiry brought his own position in the matter under scrutiny, factors of his involvement cannot be disregarded when administrative solutions to the problem are being sought.’

  It was a textbook example of bureaucratese. Blather replacing facts.

  Carmichael’s report followed O’Connor’s. In it he said that he ‘strongly suspected that many of Barritt’s difficulties have been aggravated by Senior Detective Ryan’s lack of co-operation’.

  So I was out. It was my punishment for the offence of trying to bring a paedophile priest to account. The orders came through and I was required to report to Russell Street CIB on 22 May 1972. To them, it didn’t matter if I was in Russell Street or on the dark side of the moon. They just wanted me out of Mildura. I received notice of the transfer on 12 April when I was in my office. Irwin came walking in.

  ‘I have received notification from the commissioner’s office that you are to be transferred out of Mildura. You can apply for any station that is available by the fifteenth of May but if you have made no application then you will be transferred to Russell Street CIB.’

  Irwin marched off. I didn’t say a word. Even though I’d been expecting it for months, the transfer order left me shocked and bitterly disappointed.

  I was determined to appeal, but in order to do so
I needed the support of the Police Association—the trade union of the police force. The Police Association would hear my story and if they thought I had been poorly treated, they would find the best barrister to argue my case at the Police Appeals Board, all free of charge to me.

  I rang an official at the association and made an appointment to see him. I was still confined to the district by order of Irwin, so I had to get his permission before I made the trip. I told him I was going to appeal the decision to have me transferred out of Mildura and seek the support and the assistance of the association. He grunted his acceptance and I booked a ticket on the train to Melbourne. I didn’t know this at the time, but while I was doing so, Irwin was on the phone to O’Connor. O’Connor wasn’t going to let my appeal get up. He’d make a few phone calls and make sure the appeal wouldn’t get off the ground.

  Back then the Police Association office was in MacKenzie Street, in the shadow of Russell Street headquarters. I made my way from Spencer Street along to the office where a receptionist ushered me in to see the official. I introduced myself to the official and put my hand out in greeting. He stood up but didn’t shake my hand, even though I continued to hold out mine. He then resumed his seat and, taking his prompt, I sat down in front of him.

  ‘How can I help you?’ he asked.

  ‘I want to appeal my transfer from Mildura CIB to Russell Street.’

  I started telling him the whole story. I detailed my investigation of Day and how that had begun with a call from John Howden. I told him that I had interviewed Day’s victims, who had all provided me with signed statements.

  The official seemed to be taking this all in his stride, nodding occasionally or shaking his head in a show of empathy. I was about to tell him that O’Connor offered me the bribe in the backyard of my home when the official suddenly rose from his chair and took off out of the office and down the corridor, yelling, ‘This is too much for me! I can’t handle this!’

  I was startled by his reaction but I remained in his office, sitting patiently, hoping he would soon recover his composure and return. I sat there for half an hour before I realised he was probably not going to come back. I got up and approached the receptionist.