Freeman became friendly with a US gaming figure heavily connected with ‘The Mob’. The man had links back to the notorious Meyer Lansky. Letters intercepted by police show that Freeman sent the mobster monthly payments in the US and the pair met regularly.
Before one trip, where they were to meet at the Beverly Wiltshire Hotel, the organised crime figure asked Freeman to bring some contraband with him. Not drugs but something possibly worse: budgie smugglers. And he didn’t mean small birds.
The US gangster wrote, ‘If at all possible, I would like to have three pairs of Speedo Bathing Shorts, size 34 – one yellow and two in other bright colours. I’ll leave it up to you, as you know what I like.’
Sadly, George probably did.
Freeman was shot in the head Anzac Day 1979, but survived. The man who allegedly fired the shot, John Marcus ‘Mad Dog’ Miller, didn’t. He was shot dead outside his Coogee house six weeks later.
Freeman was said to be the killer. He left his home that night, dressed in black – the colour he wore when he suspected someone would die. As usual George only punted when he had the inside mail.
Royal Commissioner and former New South Wales policeman, Justice Donald Stewart, found that Freeman was linked to race fixing, SP bookmaking and illicit protected casinos. Stewart also exposed Sydney’s worst-kept secret – that Freeman had improper relationships with senior police, lawyers and members of the judiciary.
Illegal phone taps on Freeman’s phone showed he regularly tipped Farquhar which horses to back. No wonder the chief magistrate liked him. The tips were 98 per cent successful. It would take someone with more character than the greedy Farquhar to resist such an exquisite temptation.
In August 1984, Freeman was charged with wounding Frank Hing, a man named in the New South Wales Parliament as having Triad connections. But witnesses were reluctant to give evidence and the case against Freeman failed.
Freeman saw the old pecking order was breaking down and that new splinter groups wanted a larger piece of the pie.
This was the background to Flannery’s rise and fall in Sydney.
Flannery started to push himself on Freeman, bragging about the murders he had committed. He saw his criminal record as an underworld CV and he told Freeman that if he needed anyone killed, he was the man for the job.
Freeman later declared that he was polite to the hit man because, ‘Flannery scared me. Anyone who wasn’t scared by him didn’t know the man.’
Freeman always maintained he did not employ Flannery but the reality was he paid him a weekly retainer and liked to show off his new intimidator. Freeman recalled that at one party Flannery was determined to leave an impression.
‘He wanted to meet everyone, pushing his own violent image all the time. He wanted people to fear him – and he wanted customers.’
According to Kath Flannery, Freeman was keen to have her Chris on his team. She said he helped raise $22,000 for ‘Rentakill’s’ legal fees between the first and second trial.
She said Flannery would often accompany Freeman when he collected his gambling debts. His job, she said, was to keep Freeman alive. ‘He was supposed to be between George and anybody who wanted to kill him.’
But if Freeman thought he could control Flannery he was mistaken. The man from Melbourne was a loose cannon with a concealed .38.
As with his time at Mickey’s Disco in St Kilda, when Flannery began by working for Ron Feeney but eventually wanted to be the boss, he was never going to be content with only being hired muscle. He wanted to be a player.
He arrived in Sydney just in time for an underworld war fought over turf and egos. There were several factions, each with its own group of corrupt police backing them.
But the brash outsider was a one-man faction, the wild card in the pack.
13
CODE BREAKER
THE SHOOTING OF MICHAEL DRURY
‘I was a giant in the trade; I thought I was invincible, and unpinchable.’
IF only there hadn’t been a sale at the Melbourne Myer store.
Then a policeman wouldn’t have slipped away to buy his wife some sheets and then he wouldn’t have been a little bit late for a briefing on a drug sting to be carried out by a visiting New South Wales undercover detective.
Perhaps then he would have heard the exact instructions on when to move in after the heroin was exchanged and before the $110,000 buy-bust money was out of sight.
Because if those instructions had been followed then one of the main targets would have been arrested outside the Old Melbourne Motor Inn in textbook fashion and the case would have ended with criminal convictions and police commendations.
Instead it started a long, painful and fatal chain of events that would lead to at least two killings and the attempted murder of an undercover detective. The chain would also lead to the ultimate exposure of deep and sinister corruption in police ranks.
Mick Drury was the undercover policeman who almost died. He was young, smart and ambitious and, like most detectives, keen to keep control of his investigation.
It was a New South Wales drug operation but eventually it bled over the border into Victoria. This meant it would have to become a joint job involving both state forces.
This was always fraught with danger as there had long been a simmering distrust between the two groups. The Victorians were sometimes dismissed as ‘Mexicans’ because ‘they were only good down south,’ while the New South Wales force was often referred to as the ‘best police that money could buy.’
In reality, the drug problem had been recognised in New South Wales and more resources were devoted to enforcing drug laws than in Victoria. The drug squad in Sydney considered it was the best and would tell anyone who cared to listen and those who didn’t. Most Victorian detectives weren’t impressed. They had seen many of their jobs burned as crooks were tipped off when information went over the border.
In one job that went to New South Wales, Melbourne drug squad detectives photographed money to be used in an undercover buy but Sydney surveillance police ‘lost’ the suspect (and the money) after the exchange. Later it was found that the money had been divided among bent Sydney police.
In another job the drug courier didn’t get far from the Sydney airport before he was ambushed and his cash stolen. Detectives in Victoria blamed their Sydney counterparts.
In 1981 Victorian police had solid information that New South Wales Deputy Commissioner Bill Allen (who was being groomed for the top job) was the bagman for some government figures and that each Wednesday he would deliver a share of the bribe money to a senior minister. The information was that police collected $100 a month from each SP bookmaker and $5000 a week from illegal casinos. Further information was that Allen used two corrupt men in the 21 Division, which was police gaming, to run the scam.
Victorian police secretly went to Sydney and photographed Allen getting into a car on a Wednesday and driving in the direction of the minister’s office.
When the information was passed to the New South Wales Commissioner his response was both useless and predictable. He sent a senior officer to ‘investigate’ whose insightful questions included: ‘Are you in a position to advise me on whose authority those photographs were taken?’
Translation: ‘Keep out of our patch.’
Bill Allen remained Deputy Commissioner – until he was finally exposed as a crook. He was found to have regularly met crime boss Abe Saffron and retired in disgrace after being demoted to sergeant. He was later jailed for bribing the head of the Special Licensing Police on at least five occasions.
But while the Victorians were quick to blame corrupt Sydney detectives they tended to be blind to the crooks in their own ranks.
It was in this climate that they came together to co-operate. The two controlling police were Johnny Weel from Victoria – laconic, tough, brave and straight as a gun barrel – and Mick Drury, who was loud, funny and cocky.
They were different types of men but they were both good
at what they did. But above them there were tensions. The New South Wales police arrived and tried to take over while the Victorians tried to protect their patch. If the arrests were made it would be dealt with in Victorian courts and they would get to run the case.
The Sydney police refused to hand over documents and Melbourne officers were slow to come up with the $110,000 for the undercover buy. But eventually a plan was hatched and the deal was set for the Old Melbourne in North Melbourne in March 1982.
The room would be bugged. Armed police would be in adjoining rooms and units stationed outside in the street.
With a little luck, police would get the Sydney connection, Jack Richardson, the distributor, Brian Hansen, and the major supplier, Alan Williams, in the operation.
On the day it began slowly and then went downhill. Drury and his money were there and so was Hansen, but Williams simply refused to turn up with the heroin. And a heroin sting without any heroin is not much of a sting – more just a waste of time.
After nearly nine hours, Williams – stoned, distracted and still suspicious – finally fronted and the deal was done outside the hotel. Drury pressed a squeal button hidden under his armpit to trigger the arrest.
But the police who were meant to move in got it wrong. They rushed in too fast, and the car that was supposed to block the dealer’s escape overshot the spot by thirty metres. It was enough to give Williams an out – and he took it – driving off with the heroin.
He dumped the gear and ran through Melbourne University, where he had once worked as a cleaner, and disappeared.
Eventually, he was arrested but the case was no longer simple. Having failed to catch him with the heroin, the prosecution would rely heavily on police evidence and that would prove to be confused and deeply flawed.
But Williams wasn’t going to take chances. He had an inside man in Victoria – a well-respected long-term investigator – and through him he first tried to buy back the key evidence: the heroin found dumped at Melbourne University.
Within a week, the word was out that he would pay $30,000 to have the gear – by then at the forensic laboratory – swapped for harmless powder. But John Weel was told of the plan and quickly had the suspect powder tested to ensure that even if there were a quick switch, the evidence already existed to nail the crook. This meant that Williams’ first attempt to bribe his way out failed. But no matter. At the committal the magistrate found sufficient evidence to send Richardson and Hansen to trial but ordered that Williams be freed.
However, the Crown eventually decided that Williams should be directly presented on the case.
Having seen the flawed prosecution case, Williams knew that he could only be convicted on Drury’s eyewitness testimony and he started to use contacts to see if Drury could be bought.
Considering the reputation of New South Wales police at the time, it was a fair bet. But he was a good player out of luck.
His approach, through an old mate, hit man Christopher Dale Flannery, to rogue detective Roger Rogerson and then to Drury, was rebuffed. But it speaks volumes about the state of play at the time that Rogerson could calmly ask a fellow officer to cop a bribe without fearing it would be reported to higher authorities.
Many New South Wales police were convinced they were above the law and frankly, in effect they were probably right.
When Drury knocked back the approach (but didn’t report it) Williams and Flannery decided that if they couldn’t buy the undercover detective, they should kill him.
On 6 June 1984 Flannery, possibly in the company of his old mate Laurence Joseph Prendergast, shot Drury at his Chatswood home.
Against all odds, the policeman survived and his testimony would ultimately expose the cancer within New South Wales law enforcement.
There are many versions of what really happened. Some have been told – some haven’t.
Roger Rogerson was never convicted of attempting to bribe Drury or involvement in the attempted murder.
He maintains his innocence.
Flannery’s version will never be known because he went on the missing list before he could be charged. Prendergast was also murdered and his body never found.
Williams’ co-offender Jack Richardson could not assist after his body was found in country Victoria with two bullets in the back of his head. Almost certainly the last person he saw was Flannery – who took the contract to kill likeable Jack on behalf of Williams.
Williams was frightened the former star ruckman, who played more than 100 games with West Adelaide and Sturt, would roll over and talk to police. And he was right. The man they called Melbourne Jack was starting to indicate he wouldn’t mind a chat to the right detective.
Richardson was last seen talking to two men in a Fitzroy Street ice-cream parlour in St Kilda on 4 March 1984. It was only a few hundred metres from where Flannery used to work at Mickey’s Disco.
Timing is everything. Richardson disappeared the day before he was due in court for a preliminary hearing on Williams’ heroin trafficking charges.
Another man close to the crew was Melbourne drug dealer Leslie ‘Johnny’ Cole, who was shot dead outside his Sydney home on 10 November 1982. His biological son, Mark Moran, would be killed in eerily similar circumstances when he was ambushed outside his home in June 2000.
The only man who survived – at least for a time – to tell his story was Williams himself, who admits he was prepared to pay $100,000 to have Drury killed.
Williams spoke to the authors just weeks after he was released from Goulburn Prison in 1992. He said he wanted to make a fresh start. Sadly, he didn’t make it.
He recalled that on the day of the deal in the Old Melbourne his instincts told him there was something wrong but greed and a brain clouded with heroin made him go ahead regardless.
‘I knew Brian Hansen – he said he had a drug buyer (Drury) down from Sydney. The deal was supposed to kick off at lunchtime, but for about nine hours I smelled a rat. I didn’t want to do the business. Brian, on the other hand, was insistent, he said he had counted the money and that everything was sweet.’
Williams was in another suburb, but after being badgered he agreed to go to the Old Melbourne with the heroin. But he was ‘light’. He was supposed to supply a pound but had already sold four ounces to a regular customer.
Still wary of the stranger from Sydney, he wanted the deal done in public. ‘I didn’t go into the hotel, I waited in the car outside.
‘To cut a long story short, Brian went into the hotel, came back with Drury and introduced him. Well, he didn’t want to get into the car. (Drury wanted to control the situation and signal waiting police to move when he saw the heroin.)
‘I smelled a rat. I showed him the gear but there was something wrong.’ Moments later, Williams saw an unmarked police car in his rear view mirror speed around the corner.
‘They were so keen to block me in that they skidded past the car. I put it in gear and just took off.’
Williams may have been filled with juice but once he abandoned his car close by, near Melbourne University, the former star footballer could easily outpace his pursuers on foot. He knew the university layout well and escaped after dumping the drugs. About four months later, he was arrested in Adelaide and charged with heroin trafficking.
The committal was a shambles. Police who declared they could identify Williams were discredited. Only Drury’s evidence survived. The case was certainly not helped by New South Wales and Victorian police squabbling with each other. Despite repeated requests, Drury’s statement was not delivered until the day of the hearing.
When the Director of Public Prosecutions decided to directly present the case to a higher court, Williams believed only one man stood between him and a long stretch in Pentridge Prison and that man was Michael Drury.
‘I knew I needed help because the only bloke who stuck to his guns in the committal was Drury. He was unshakeable. It wasn’t his efforts which fell down for the prosecution; it was the Melbourne police around
him, trying too hard.
‘Mick Drury said it like it was, the others painted a picture which couldn’t be finished. They ran out of paint.’
Williams had had enough dealings with corrupt police to believe he could still buy himself out of trouble but he needed an ‘in’.
He needed someone to get an offer to Drury that he could make a big dollar if he just massaged his evidence a little. He wouldn’t need to tell obvious lies, just forget a few key facts and stumble a few times with his answers. That would surely be enough.
In the underworld there is a loose group of ‘mates’ who try to look after each other when they get a chance – favours are called in, monies paid and advice given.
Williams had a mate in Sydney he thought could help him – Christopher Dale Flannery – known as Rentakill. Flannery and Williams had first teamed up as juvenile offenders and as young adults had pulled armed robberies together. In jail they sometimes shared a cell.
‘I knew Chris, I always found him to be a thorough gentleman.’ Alan, it must be said, was never a good judge of character, although he did add as an afterthought about Flannery: ‘He was also a murderer and a paid killer.
‘I ran into him in Melbourne and mentioned to him that I had been pinched by an undercover copper from Sydney. I asked him if he could do anything in regard to getting him to change his evidence or slow it down.
‘He said he would see what he could do, that he had a couple of jacks (police) in Sydney sweet. He said it would cost and I said I wasn’t worried about the cost side of it.’
According to evidence given in a series of court cases, Roger ‘The Dodger’ Rogerson approached Drury with a bribe offer on behalf of Williams, an offer Drury refused.
Williams may have been nasty but he wasn’t mean. The offer, for the standards of the early 1980s, was generous. ‘I offered $30,000 at one stage, $50,000 at another stage, $100,000 and an open ticket in the end.’
According to court testimony, Williams met with Flannery and Rogerson at a Sydney restaurant where he was told the bad news that the bribe offer had failed.
A Tale of Two Cities Page 24