‘After the death of his brother he kept very much to himself and trusted no-one. I was told that I had to do whatever I could, within reason, to keep that man alive.
‘He would say when he had been followed by a car and I would have it checked to see if it was a police surveillance unit. If it was, he wasn’t worried.
‘Brian was only concerned with staying alive and avenging the murder of his brother.
‘After he killed Bennett – Kane kept on the move. Brian never kept appointments, he was very elusive,’ the former policeman said.
He could have moved interstate, or he could have used his waterside connections to disappear overseas. But the former amateur boxer did not build his fearsome reputation by running away.
He did, however, use all the lessons he’d learned in the ring: to avoid being hit was as important as landing a punch. More so when guns came into play.
Brian’s widowed sister-in-law, Judi, was one of the few people he trusted after Les’s murder in 1978. But proof of how close he played to his chest was that even she was not told everything, just in case. She knew it was not so much to protect him but his estranged wife Robyn and his three children.
Robyn had finally kicked Brian out of their Camberwell home – near St Dominic’s Catholic Church – after Les’s murder. It was too nerve-wracking to live with a man who was, it stood to reason, next on the hit list.
‘None of us knew where Brian lived,’ Judi told the authors. ‘He was very paranoid for good reason. He used to visit me and the kids in Balwyn, maybe once a week after Les was killed.’
Once, when Brian had been living away from the family home in Camberwell to draw the heat away, his wife Robyn invited Judi and her children to visit her on the quiet – that is, without Brian knowing. Before that Judi’s two kids had often asked about visiting their Aunty Robyn and their cousins and he’d joked: ‘No, you can’t because there’s a moat with crocodiles in it!’ But after visiting their cousins’ house, the kids knew better. So next time Brian came to visit the kids said, ‘There is not a moat with crocodiles,’ and Judi had to admit they’d been there.
It was a humorous take on a deadly serious situation. Kane was engaged in a war of nerves with men who wanted to kill him before he killed them.
After he left home, he struck up a close relationship with an attractive divorcee called Fran Kear, who was later able to give the authors an insight into the soft side and secret fears of the hard man.
Another policeman remembers seeing him in The Galaxy nightclub. ‘He gave me a false name and when I said I knew he was Brian Kane he wanted a fight. I told him to settle down. In the end, I could talk to him but if you asked the wrong question he would just stare through you and say nothing.
‘Les was more volatile but Brian was more respected. He would help out local football clubs and loved Father Brosnan. He would always give him some cash because the old Father loved a punt.’
Brian Kane was more cunning than his volatile brother, Les, but just as dangerous. While Les was often before the courts for crimes of violence, Brian’s criminal record was modest. In 1972 he was fined $30 for hindering police and he had a few early convictions for stealing and assaults.
He was considered one of the most influential men in Melbourne’s underworld for years – but he wasn’t the only crook with a gun and a ruthless streak.
He knew someone would be coming for him eventually. Three years later, they did.
FOR Brian Kane it was a day like any other. He had his worries but one of them was not having to do regular work. On Friday 26 November 1982, he was looking forward to a long lunch.
At 40 the former boxer might have been beginning to slow down a bit. But photographs taken of him only a few days before show that he was in good shape – and still a man to be reckoned with.
He met a mate, Sandra Walsh, at a coffee shop in Grattan Street, Carlton, and then they went for lunch in nearby Lygon Street.
Around 4.15 pm the pair left the restaurant for some fresh air and some shopping. Kane liked to make sure he was seen in the Lygon Street strip. It was good for business to be spotted there regularly, as his standover beat included the illegal gambling spots hidden above the popular restaurants and cafes.
Brian became bored and stopped off for a quick haircut before the couple headed to the Tramway Hotel in Fitzroy for a few gin and tonics.
Around 8.30 pm they moved on to the Quarry Hotel in the northern stretch of Lygon Street, in Brunswick. It was a semi-regular drinking spot for Kane, who was popular at the pub. He was the first to chat to anyone in the hotel and the first to put his hand in his pocket for a raffle. He could afford to.
‘He was really well liked and made the effort to portray an image as a good guy gangster,’ one detective said.
He spoke to an older woman in the lounge, asking how the television he had bought her was working. Then he bought a round of half gin and tonics before settling in next to the jukebox.
Police believe the gunmen knew they would find Kane at the Quarry. Whether they were tipped off that day where he would be or whether they had been told the hotel was one of his regulars is not known.
Earlier, a mutual friend had borrowed Sandra’s distinctive V12 Jaguar and Brian told him to drop it back at the Quarry after 8pm.
Anyone looking for Kane would have been able to spot the big Jag outside the pub. And the people hunting him were experts at picking their moment.
As Kane sat down with Sandra and another associate, Trevor Russell, two men wearing balaclavas burst in and began firing from .38 snub-nosed revolvers – the same type of weapon Kane used to kill Bennett in the City Court three years earlier.
Kane leapt to his feet, tipping over the table and pushing Sandra Walsh down as he did so.
Legend has it that as the first shot hit Kane, he was diving for his gun hidden in Sandra’s handbag. (Because he could be jailed for carrying an illegal pistol, he regularly used women to ‘carry’ for him.)
He didn’t make it. He was shot in the head and chest at point blank range.
Sandra Walsh told friends later that the table was obscuring her vision when the two shots went off next to her. She thought to herself, ‘That’s Brian and that’s Trevor – I’m next.’ But she was wrong. Both shots were meant for Kane. She cradled the dying man while Russell bolted through the hotel kitchen.
Police said that when they arrived Sandra was yelling: ‘He’s been shot, he’s been shot. Do you know who he is? Do you? It’s Brian Kane.’ Asked what had happened she said, ‘He was shot and that’s all I’m saying.’
Kane was taken to the Royal Melbourne Hospital but died on the operating table.
Typically, the homicide squad was confronted with the usual blank looks and silence from those who could have helped solve the murder. Those who didn’t know, speculated. Those who did, said nothing.
There was a short list of suspects. Some were obvious while some were less so. Top of the pops were the obvious two – Vinnie Mikkelsen and Laurie Prendergast. After all, they had been charged with Bennett over the murder of Brian’s brother Les and, although acquitted, no one on either side of the law thought there were other suspects for Les Kane’s death. In a direct sense, Mikkelsen and Prendergast had most to gain from Brian’s death. For if Brian had killed Bennett in the City Court to avenge his brother’s death, it would be a fair bet he would eventually try for the hat trick by nailing the other two.
But, despite the theories, there was nothing directly linking the pair to the Quarry Hotel hit.
The head of the case was Victoria’s then most experienced homicide investigator, Detective Senior Sergeant Jim Fry.
He said the obvious motive for the murder was a payback for the Bennett killing. ‘Whoever did it was either very professional or very lucky because they got away with it.’
But there were other suspects. One was hit man Christopher Dale Flannery, who was living in Sydney at the time but was a local boy, and a close friend of Prender
gast so was seen as an enemy of the Kanes.
Later, when there was an attempt on Flannery’s life he wrongly blamed the last of the Kane brothers, Ray, for the attack.
Certainly Flannery was responsible for killing a Kane ally, Les Cole, just two weeks before the Quarry attack but it was unlikely that Kane’s enemies would have needed to sub-contract the deal and Chris Flannery wasn’t into contra deals. He was more a cash man.
The smart money has always been on two other killers. Both were calculating loners who would occasionally team up with others for a few jobs before moving on.
One was a man known as ‘The Duke’, a ruthless gunman later implicated in paid hits during Melbourne’s underworld war between Carl Williams and the Moran clan. He was an armed robber and rumoured contract killer. Even the hardest of underworld hard men feared The Duke.
The other was Russell Cox, who had escaped from New South Wales’ maximum security Katingal Division in Sydney’s Long Bay prison five years earlier.
Cox was living with Ray Bennett’s wife’s sister and had a vested interest in backing-up for the Magistrates’ Court killing.
Bennett and Cox had teamed up to commit armed robberies in Victoria and Queensland and were loyal to each other.
Cox and The Duke were close associates in the early 1980s and were both friends of armed robber Santo Mercuri. Just three months after the Quarry Hotel hit, police received intelligence that The Duke had committed another shooting – this time in Reservoir. The report said The Duke was, ‘An associate of Sam Mercuri and believed running with Russell Cox.’
Certainly Cox and The Duke were seen chatting and having coffee in Hawthorn in the months preceding the hit.
For a major player in the underworld, Kane’s estate was surprisingly modest. But that was before illegal drugs became the currency of crime.
Kane was respected, not because he was rich, but because he was tough. He was one of the last suburban gangsters – the next generation would be national and international.
Brian Kane and his generation of gunmen were fighting and killing over a dying world – dinosaurs battling at the start of the Ice Age.
They didn’t know that the armed robbery and illegal gambling were rackets well past their best. Pills and powders were where the real money would be made in the future.
Gunmen would become a penny a truckload while self taught chemists who could brew a batch of speed were prized recruits.
According to Father Brosnan, Kane knew that in his line of work his enemies would eventually find him.
‘I don’t think he knew he was going to die like this but he was a realistic man; he knew what was possible. The best thing about him was that he wasn’t a hypocrite.’
Father Brosnan taught the three Kane boys at St John’s School 25 years earlier. ‘I taught them how to fight. I didn’t do a bad job, did I?’
Well, two were dead and the other would be jailed for many years so the Father’s record was not up there with Angelo Dundee. One policeman said after Kane was murdered that he would ‘be no great loss.’ He was wrong. There were 169 death notices placed in The Sun – including a handful from star footballers – in the week after his death.
Many were from women. Brian was a ladies’ man as well as a man’s man – once having a torrid affair with another underworld identity’s wife.
Some of the death notices were placed by the men who would fill the power vacuum left by the Kane murders. Mick Gatto and Alphonse Gangitano were to pay their respects, while one notice to ‘Uncle Brian’ was signed by ‘Your little mate, Jason Moran.’
9
A MATTER OF TIME
ANOTHER BOOKIE ROBBER BITES THE DUST
‘Prendergast is no doubt
one of Australia’s most
notorious criminals.’
AS a professional punter and career gunman, Laurence Joseph Prendergast must have known the odds of him living to normal retirement age were slim to none. He was right: the closest he came to a gold watch was scoring a ‘hot’ one from another thief.
Police have at least three strong theories why he was murdered. But what they haven’t got is a body, or a suspect, or a murder scene, or an informer, or a lead. Apart from those small problems the investigation is proceeding well – and has been for more than twenty years.
Even as a child Prendergast was bad news – and age didn’t improve him. He first came to the notice of police at twelve years old when he became an apprentice housebreaker and thief working with his older brother.
Laurie was the second of nine children from a dysfunctional family that included another two stepchildren. In desperation, authorities placed him in the St Augustine orphanage for two years to try to straighten him out.
It didn’t work. It was already too late.
While the young Prendergast had a good relationship with his father he said once that his alcoholic mother had beaten him for as long as he could remember.
It left him with a chip on his shoulder and a desire to square the ledger. As is often the case, those who are bullied look to bully others and young Laurie progressed quickly from fists to rocks (he was charged with throwing missiles to endanger persons when he was a child) and then to guns. He was charged with discharging a firearm from a car when still a teenager.
He went to four schools, leaving in year eight with a reputation as an average student with an above average temper.
A schoolmate remembers, ‘He was really cool and stand-offish. He only had about five or six close friends and they all ended up gangsters. He was a tough bastard and he could fight.’
Prendergast became an apprentice butcher, a storeman and a labourer and while he had held twenty jobs, few lasted more than two weeks.
His love was sport, the more violent the better. He was a good footballer, won two amateur wrestling titles and was a handy amateur boxer. But it was his expertise at using violence outside the ring that gave him his fearsome reputation.
His criminal record shows that he soon moved to sex crimes with violence. As a teenager he broke into a house where he sexually assaulted a 26-year-old woman. He was sentenced to twelve months in a youth detention centre for buggery and burglary.
But while recovering from a car accident he escaped from hospital and was on the run for another year. The accident left him with a fractured skull. The injury did not help his anger management problems.
In 1968 he was sentenced to an adult jail for rape and other offences. His partner in crime was his childhood friend, Christopher Dale Flannery. They would live similar violent lives and would disappear in remarkably similar circumstances.
In 1974 Prendergast was sentenced in the county court to five years jail over an attempt to rob the Bank of New South Wales in Pascoe Vale. Again his partner was Flannery, who was also sentenced to jail.
By the mid-1970s Prendergast was uncontrollable. He was convicted of assaulting a prison officer and later of assaulting a policeman.
In the case where he attacked police he chose a strange place to try and get even. He was in the criminal dock as Senior Detective Kim West was giving evidence on a charge of possession of a pistol. West was a Falstaffian figure and his testimony was always entertaining – Shakespeare meets The Bill.
But on this occasion the detective’s recollections seemed to disturb Prendergast. When the experienced policeman gave sworn evidence that Prendergast had confessed in the back of a police car, it became all too much for the highly-strung Laurie.
‘He jumped out of the dock and ran along the bar table yelling, “You are a liar. You are telling lies”,’ West recalled.
Senior Detective Ian ‘Twiggy’ Thomas had to tackle him. He grabbed him in a bear-hug and wrestled him from the bar table. Although he was smaller, Prendergast used his wrestling experience to swivel to face Thomas. Then he head butted and bit the startled detective on the left cheek, leaving a wound that required three stitches. It became infected; leaving a permanent reminder that dental hygiene was not hi
gh on Prendergast’s lists of priorities.
As he was bundled back into his cell, Prendergast lashed out with a kick trying to make contact with West’s groin. In the confusion the cell door was smashed into Prendergast’s right leg – the same thigh that was still tender from where he had been shot during a failed armed robbery.
The pistol charges were dismissed but he was sentenced to four months for the assault. Clearly he had bitten off more than he could chew.
On release from jail he teamed up with the gang of armed robbers led by Ray Bennett. Police say he was one of the team that carried out the Great Bookie Robbery.
And when Bennett fell out with the Kane brothers, Laurie was quick to back up. He, Bennett and Vinnie Mikkelsen were alleged to have machine-gunned Les Kane to death in late 1978.
Prendergast knew the consequences of taking on the Kanes. Two months before the murder, he obtained a false passport after stealing the identity of an associate named Noel Robert Herity.
He was charged in December with the murder and acquitted nine months later.
His police record states that following the acquittal, ‘Prendergast has done everything he can to hide his current whereabouts. He lives in constant fear of being shot by the sole remaining brother Ray Kane or one of his associates.’
When arrested for carrying a gun he told police he needed a weapon because of the ‘vendetta with the Kane family.’
His police record states, ‘Prendergast is no doubt one of Australia’s most notorious criminals.
‘(He is) considered to be a determined, persistent and cunning criminal with an intense hatred for the police or any kind of authority’.
In 1980 he was spotted in Brunswick, probably doing surveillance on a payroll delivery. He was found to be in possession of a pistol that he said he needed for protection.
When he was taken back to an interview room in the Russell Street police station he turned around and shaped up to the lone detective. Laurie’s judgment was slightly flawed as he had decided to take on a policeman training for an upcoming boxing competition. The policeman hit him twice and Laurie wanted to make friends.
A Tale of Two Cities Page 17