Williams was devastated. He knew he was looking at a long stretch inside. Then Flannery broke the silence: ‘Well, if it was me, I’d put him off (kill him).’
Williams didn’t immediately respond then just said: ‘That’s a big step’. But it didn’t take long for him to take it.
‘The deal was done in the restaurant,’ Williams said.
That deal, done in cold blood over cool beers, was to kill Drury for $100,000. The contract called for a down payment of $50,000 and the rest after the killing.
‘I was using the gear (heroin) at the time. If I had my full faculties there is no way I would have been involved in the plan.
‘I was a giant in the trade; I thought I was invincible, and unpinchable. But I stepped over the line with the Drury thing. It is something I will regret for the rest of my life.’
It was madness. But the fact they could even suggest that you could kill an undercover policeman in his home in front of his family and resume business as usual shows how out-of control Sydney was in the 1980s.
The corrupt syndicates – some linked to the highest police, legal and political networks – really believed they could fix anything.
The Drury shooting would prove to be the tipping point. The fallout would result in the destruction of many of the established criminal fiefdoms and the cosy police-gangland franchises that had controlled organised crime in Sydney for decades.
It would lead to setting up integrity commissions and external reviews. No longer would police be a law unto themselves.
Williams sent the deposit to Flannery and then waited for the inevitable. He did not know when and where Drury would be killed – he left that to his paid ‘experts’.
And Williams, through dumb luck, ended up with the perfect alibi. He had been picked up for speeding and had to produce his licence at the Greensborough police station. It proved he was in Melbourne at the time of the shooting.
Drury was gunned down while he was washing dishes at home. ‘When I knew he had been shot it was panic-stations. The heat was on. Basically I didn’t realise the repercussions this would cause. It was just a stupid thing to do.’
When Williams stopped being a stick-up merchant and moved into the drug trade he tried to stay clean and to treat it as a business. But soon he was just another junkie – a rich one with an endless supply – but still just a junkie.
‘I started smoking, and then it was up the snozzer and then up the Warwick Farm (arm). I was stoned all the time, I wasn’t thinking straight.’
Williams said that when he heard that Drury was shot he, ‘started getting into the gear (drugs) even heavier than ever.
‘I knew I was the number one suspect from day one. But I also knew that the police who had anything to do with me knew that I was not the sort of gangster who would premeditate this sort of murder.’
If so, the police were wrong.
For all his talk of remorse, at the time Williams was happy that Drury was out of the way and could not give evidence in his heroin trial.
‘I was more concerned about the matter at hand than Drury,’ he admitted later.
But the Sydney undercover detective, fighting for his life in hospital, made what everyone thought was a dying deposition outlining the attempted bribe by Rogerson.
Everyone, including his colleagues, expected him to die. He had been, after all, shot twice at point blank range. Even Flannery was convinced, assuring Williams: ‘He’s lost a lot of blood; I don’t think he’ll make it. He’s lost a lot of blood and is very weak.’
But this time Flannery, who had more experience with gunshot wounds than most surgeons, was wrong.
‘When he realised he was going to live, Chris said not to worry about sending the other $50,000. The job hadn’t been completed,’ Williams said.
Flannery may have been a cold-blooded killer but he expected to get paid only on results. But his honour did not extend to refunding the $50,000 he had already been paid. And Williams was not game to raise the subject.
The ultimate irony is that Drury recovered and gave evidence against Williams in his heroin trial but the drug dealer beat the charges on the evidence.
‘The whole plan was a waste.’
Drug dealing heavyweight or not, Williams was now the weak link. Once Drury made his statement implicating Rogerson in the attempted cop killing, all roads led to Melbourne.
Williams was the only one who could implicate Rogerson and Flannery in the attempted murder.
Within days stories in the media suggested the shooting related to the ‘Melbourne Job.’ Clearly this meant people on both sides of the law began to look for him.
Williams was still regularly reporting on bail and would be easy to find. He agreed to have a coffee with two well-known Victorian detectives in a Greek café in Melbourne.
One of them, the legendary thief-catcher Brian Murphy, told Williams that New South Wales police were out to kill him and he should not go home that night.
It was a bluff. ‘I just wanted to stir him up so he would talk,’ the streetwise Murphy said later.
It worked. ‘He went to a public phone and rang his wife, telling her to grab a few things and get out.’
Williams had few friends outside the underworld.
‘Squareheads’ tend to ask too many questions about unexplained wealth and lazy lifestyles. But Williams’ brother-in-law Lindsay Simpson was the exception.
A friendly man who worked in the building trade, Simpson would drink with Alan and not pry into areas where he was not welcome.
But on the day Williams was told he was a marked man, ‘good blokes’ like Simpson were the last thing on his mind.
‘I was told I was to be knocked. I was completely paranoid and I clean forgot that Lindsay was to come to my house that night,’ Williams said.
Waiting outside the house to kill Williams was Roy Pollitt, a crim known as the ‘Red Rat’. It was a nickname that was defamatory to rats, unfairly maligned ever since the Black Plague.
Pollitt had escaped from jail and was being harboured by ‘Mr Death’ – Dennis Bruce Allen – a prodigious Melbourne drug dealer and killer later found to have direct links to Rogerson.
It was Allen who commissioned Pollitt to kill Williams. When Pollitt saw a man pull up at Williams’ home in Lower Plenty, he drew his gun and made the victim kneel on the ground with his hands behind his head in a hostage pose. The innocent man kept trying to tell the gunman that it was a case of mistaken identity and that his name was Simpson.
It did him no good. He was shot dead in cold blood.
It may have begun as a case of mistaken identity but when Pollitt pulled the trigger he knew his victim was not Williams. He shot him to remove a potential witness.
‘Lindsay was a good family man. It took him eight years to have a baby with his wife. Six years of hospital and doctors’ appointments. Finally he has a kid and just before its first birthday, Lindsay is dead.’ Allen paid Pollitt a $5000 deposit in counterfeit notes for the hit and then refused to pay the rest after it was found he’d killed the wrong man.
Williams used to deal drugs with Allen, who died of chronic heart disease in 1987. ‘Dennis was a conniving man and particularly dangerous in his own little world of Richmond. But he lacked a lot of heart and he had to be juiced up to do anything. He was frightened of going to jail – every time he hit the nick he’d get the horrors.’
For Williams, the writing was on the wall. His life as one of the biggest drug dealers and most powerful men in the underworld was coming to an end. The man who could sit in a Sydney restaurant and effectively sign a death warrant for a detective, was now frightened and on the run.
He had already confessed to Murphy that he had tried to bribe Drury but still denied he was involved in the murder attempt.
Williams knew it was only a matter of time before the next set of killers came knocking. His co-offender Jack Richardson was dead. His brother-in-law Lindsay Simpson was also dead. He knew he would be next unless
he could cut a deal.
He was placed on the top ten most wanted list and arrested in Melbourne. He went to Sydney, and in 1986 he quietly pleaded guilty to conspiracy to attempt to bribe Drury.
Ironically, only months earlier, Roger Rogerson pleaded not guilty to similar charges and was acquitted.
Williams was given a 12-month suspended sentence but if he thought that would be the end of the matter, he was wrong.
He moved to the Northern Territory and gave up the drugs – at least temporarily – working for nearly eight months as a plant operator.
Then a New South Wales police task force, code named ‘Omega’ came knocking. They were the team Commissioner John Avery had selected to find the would-be killers of Drury.
The two targets were Rogerson and Williams. ‘When I was arrested in the Territory I was told: “The deal is this, you can either do a life lagging over a crooked copper or you can tell us what happened and jump the box (give evidence) against him”.
‘I knew I was there to be knocked.’
Williams pleaded guilty to conspiracy to murder Drury and was sentenced to fourteen years jail.
Then he gave evidence in one of the most publicised criminal trials in Australian history.
Rogerson, a highly decorated and brave New South Wales detective, was charged with plotting to kill a brother policeman. Williams, a known criminal, was the key witness alleging that Rogerson was guilty.
In the end, the jury chose to acquit Rogerson, who had always maintained his innocence.
Rogerson was sacked from the force over an unrelated matter.
Williams found himself behind bars after he confessed while the man he claimed was his partner in crime walked free.
‘I am not bitter about it. I was part of the conspiracy and I have paid the price,’ Williams would say. He served four years, six months before he was released.
‘I feel like a new person. It’s the first time I don’t have to look over my shoulder. I have been offered a new identity but I don’t think I need it.
‘Roger beat the charges, good luck to him. I am dirty on him, but good luck to him. I’m just happy that it’s over for me.’
Rogerson was later jailed for conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. The charge related to the unexplained deposit of $110,000 in false bank accounts. Key evidence given against the former star detective came from a protected witness ‘Miss Jones’, who had once worked for Dennis Allen.
Williams says he regrets the attempt on Drury’s life but doesn’t believe he broke any codes by going after a detective.
‘The code was broken by some New South Wales police years ago, long before I ever came on the scene. Some of them declared open season on some crooks.’ He said some corrupt New South Wales police were prepared to kill to protect their corrupt empires.
‘Basically it was down and out murder because they created ripples in the kickback scheme of making a quid.’
Of Drury, he says: ‘I can understand if he was bitter to the day he died. But I just hope he is remembered as a bloke who stuck to his guns and was vindicated in what he did.’
Williams’ attempts to stay off ‘the gear’ failed and he returned to becoming a hopeless drug addict.
Riddled with hepatitis and suspected of having Aids, he spent his last weeks trying to kill the shrewd Melbourne policeman who unwittingly saved his life – Brian Murphy.
It was Murphy who fabricated the story that New South Wales police were to kill him at home. If he hadn’t, Williams would have headed home on 18 September 1984 and would almost certainly have been murdered by ‘Red Rat’ Pollitt.
Williams found a gun but died in August 2001 before he could use it. A few days earlier he missed Murphy in a Carlton restaurant by a matter of minutes.
Timing was never his strong suit.
14
FRIENDLY FIRE
THE GREEN LIGHT THAT KILLED DANNY CHUBB
He was taken out to sea and set
the challenge of swimming back.
Unfortunately he was attached to
a gas cooker at the time.
FOR a prolific drug dealer Danny Chubb was also a kind and thoughtful son. After a morning conference with two of Sydney’s most notorious gunmen he popped next door to grab his mother a nice piece of fresh fish for tea.
It was a spur of the moment thing. So much so that when he walked into Bob and Di’s Fish and Chip Shop he ordered the fillet and then told the owner he had no money with him and would ‘come back shortly to pay.’
The owner knew the man driving the new green Jaguar was good for it and handed over the fish without hesitation.
He would never get paid. Within two minutes Danny Chubb was as dead as the fish he carried – shot by two gunmen. The unwrapped fillet was found still in its paper beside him.
Both a Sydney murder taskforce and a National Crime Authority investigation codenamed Curtains would find that, as is the case with many underworld murders, the victim was set up by so-called friends rather than sworn enemies.
Chubb’s marriage had recently collapsed and he had moved out of the house he shared with his wife, child and two step-children. While he could have afforded the rent for a secure penthouse he decided to move back with his mother in the Sydney suburb of Millers Point – near Sydney Harbour.
About 10.30am on 8 November 1984, he received a call. It had to be someone close who would have known of the marriage break-up and the phone number of the family home.
Chubb, 43, told a friend who had dropped in he was heading out for a quick meeting and would be back shortly.
He drove a short distance to the Captain Cook Hotel to meet two of his best customers – Arthur ‘Neddy’ Smith and Graham ‘Abo’ Henry.
Big, brash and not particularly bright, Smith should have been no match for trained and dedicated detectives. But the man they called ‘Neddy’ was born in the golden era of Sydney crime and crooked police gave him the ‘green light’. For Neddy, it was better than a royal pardon.
The man himself said of his novel arrangement with the lawmen: ‘Thank Christ for corruption.’
One of his closest friends and protectors was the notorious Roger Rogerson, said to be the king of bent police. And in New South Wales that was saying something.
The Woodward Royal Commission on drug trafficking found that Smith’s drug syndicate was moving eleven kilograms of heroin a month.
In 1992, the Independent Commission Against Corruption began an investigation into claims that a corrupt cell of New South Wales detectives was organising the armed robberies.
Commissioner Ian Temby found that Smith was a pivotal figure. ‘I conclude that over a period in excess of a decade, Smith was helped by various police officers, who provided him with information, looked after him when charges were laid or threatened and generally acted in contravention of their sworn duty. The evidence shows that Smith was friendly with a number of police officers and very close to a few.’
When he was finally jailed he wrote his memoirs, Neddy – The Life and Crimes of Arthur Stanley Smith, which exposed the system in New South Wales. It made staggering reading.
‘In Victoria, there isn’t much corruption. They kill you down there. They certainly don’t do too much business.
‘But when I was working in New South Wales, just about everyone was corrupt and anything was possible. Late 1980 was the beginning of a decade of crime and corruption within the New South Wales police force that will never be equalled.
‘There has always been crime and corruption within the New South Wales police force but nothing like it was then. And I was in the middle of it.
‘I had police organising crimes for me to do, then keeping me informed as to how much – if any – progress was being made in the investigations. I had what is commonly known within criminal circles as the “Green Light”, which meant I could virtually do as I pleased. Nothing was barred, with one exception – I was never to shoot at any member of the police force. But apart fro
m that, I could write my own ticket.
‘I bribed hundreds of police and did as I pleased in Sydney.
‘There was no limit to what I got away with. I could never have committed any of the major crimes I did, and got away with them, without the assistance of the New South Wales police force. They were the best police force that money could buy.’
While Neddy and ‘Abo’ were well-known underworld figures, Chubb was in many ways more powerful. As the axis of influence started to move from gunmen to drug dealers, Chubb was well placed to take advantage of the new demand.
The former able seaman had become a very able drug dealer, moving massive amounts of heroin and hashish.
His official criminal record was modest – a thief and a smalltime safe breaker – but through his network on the docks and his connection to Asian heroin suppliers he was able to provide virtually endless supplies of drugs to crooks – including Smith and Henry.
Smith wrote in his autobiography: ‘Danny arrived and we had maybe two more beers, discussed our business then stood on the footpath talking for a few minutes.’
Chubb then went next door to the fish shop, grabbed the fillet and drove the 300 metres home pulling up just before 11am.
As he stepped from his car, two men in balaclavas greeted him. One fired a shotgun from point blank range, removing the left side of Danny’s face and his throat. He was also shot four times in the chest with medium calibre bullets.
Not surprisingly, he was dead before he hit the ground.
Neddy would later say that he left the Captain Cook with a woman he refused to name and Henry left in a second car. They then met again at a second pub.
Neddy took a call at the pub and was told the news that Chubb was dead. ‘I had only just left Danny: I couldn’t believe he was dead. He had no enemies I knew of.’
As usual Smith was being economical with the truth.
Kath Flannery would later tell the National Crime Authority that Smith had told her husband, Chris, that he organised the murder. ‘He said Chubb owed him money and he was annoyed that Chubb was keeping better quality drugs and selling them rubbish.’
A Tale of Two Cities Page 25