by Gordon Kerr
In 1974, a few years after being released, Flannery was in trouble again. He was arrested along with two other men for an armed robbery on a David Jones department store in Perth. The arresting officer was Detective Sergeant Roger Caleb Rogerson, one of the New South Wales Police Force’s most decorated officers. Rogerson had received awards for bravery, outstanding work and devotion to duty. His awards included the Peter Mitchell Trophy, New South Wales’s highest annual police award.
Following his arrest, Flannery was extradited to Perth from Melbourne, but he was acquitted on the robbery charge. It has been alleged that he had paid a bribe to Rogerson to help him escape conviction. The fact that a few years later Rogerson spent time in jail for perverting the course of justice in relation to AU$110,000 deposited by him in bank accounts under a false name, lends credence to the view that he helped Flannery on this occasion. However, Flannery did not get to savour the taste of freedom. On his release, he was rearrested on a charge of rape for which he was wanted in the state of Victoria and he went to jail for that anyway.
Released from prison at the end of the 1970s, Flannery took the route of many ex-cons who possessed a physical presence and a certain attitude – he became a bouncer at a club called Mickey’s Disco in Melbourne’s red-light district, St Kilda. The disco was a front and Mickey’s was, in reality, a massage parlour. It had a need, therefore, for a bit of conspicuous muscle and Flannery could provide that, in spades.
Christopher Dale Flannery was, however, a man easily bored. He craved some excitement and some decent money for a change. The nightly drudge of throwing out drunks and sorting out punks who thought they were something they were not was never going to satisfy those needs. He decided, therefore, on a complete change of career, made some enquiries and managed to convince the right people that he was capable of being a hitman.
One of the first contracts Flannery undertook was the murder of a barrister, Roger Anthony Wilson. He had two accomplices – Mark Clarkson and John Williams. They followed Wilson’s car and forced it off the road, abducting him and driving him to Pakenham, a satellite suburb of Melbourne. Stopping next to wooded land, Flannery pushed the terrified Wilson out of the car and into the bush to shoot him. He failed to kill him with his first shot, however, and Wilson, with blood gushing from a head wound, attempted to escape into the bush. It is reported that Flannery, a man not renowned for his patience, ‘went mad’ at this point, emptying his gun into Wilson’s head and back. Police never did find the barrister’s body but Flannery was still arrested and charged with the murder. In October 1981 he was unexpectedly acquitted, but he only got as far as the courthouse steps where he was surrounded by New South Wales detectives who arrested him for an earlier murder, that of the Sydney brothel owner who rejoiced in the exotic name of Raymond Francis ‘Lizard’ Locksley. ‘Lizard’ Locksley had been done away with on 11 May 1979, in Menai, a suburb 29 kilometres south of Sydney’s commercial centre.
Lady Luck was still batting for Flannery, however. In 1982 the trial jury failed to reach a verdict and then, at the retrial in April 1984, Flannery was yet again acquitted of murder.
He decided it was time to get out of Melbourne and bought a place in the southern Sydney residential suburb of Arncliffe, a pleasant, quiet place with detached and semi-detached townhouses and not too much commercial development; a good place to raise a family. He brought his wife and kids over from Melbourne and went to work as a bodyguard for George Freeman, one of the leading lights of the Sydney underworld.
Since Sydney’s earliest days as a prison colony, crime has been part of the city’s make-up. Organised crime had been around since the 1790s and arriving from England were a new breed of officers – the New South Wales Corps. Nicknamed the Rum Corps, its ranks were composed of officers on half pay, troublemakers, soldiers paroled from military prisons and those who saw no future in England and were gambling on an improvement in their prospects in the New World. They began to operate more like the Mafia than a police force, smuggling rum and carving up the new territories.
As time passed, political and police corruption became endemic in Sydney and by the 20th century organised crime was well established in the city. Illegal gambling houses, brothels and illegal alcohol outlets proliferated throughout the century, while the police turned a blind eye or, more likely, accepted money to ignore them.
By late 1984, when Christopher Flannery arrived on the scene, rival gang leaders were engaged in a war for control of Sydney’s crime industry. This led to a number of high profile killings and rumours of corruption in high places. Flannery sided with Sydney gang leader Neddy Smith. Smith has claimed that Flannery was paranoid, and shot at anyone he suspected of having anything to do with Sydney gangsters Tom Domican or Barry McCann. Smith recounts how, when police officers tried to mediate in the gang wars and negotiate a cessation of hostilities, Flannery threatened a high-ranking policeman with the words: ‘You’re not a protected species, you know – you’re not a fucking koala bear!’
The truth of his words was confirmed in 1986. Mick Drury was a Sydney Drug Squad detective who had been an undercover agent in an operation mounted against Melbourne drug dealer Alan Williams, a close friend of Christopher Flannery. The operation was successful and charges of heroin-trafficking were brought against Williams. Flannery repeatedly tried to bribe Drury, using his old friend Roger Rogerson, who had recently been kicked out of the police force, but Drury rejected all his advances. Williams then claims to have agreed to pay Rogerson and Flannery AU$50,000 to kill Drury, and on 6 June the detective was shot twice through his kitchen window as he sat feeding his three-year-old daughter Belinda. He survived the bullets, but on what he thought was going to be his deathbed, he said he was convinced that the shooting had taken place because of his involvement in ‘the Melbourne job’.
Flannery was a hated man now, loathed in equal parts by both sides of the law. Some seven months after the Drury shooting, on 27 January 1985, as he and his wife walked towards the door to their house, shots rang out. Someone fired off 30 rounds at the couple using an Armalite rifle. He and his wife threw themselves to the ground and he received a bullet through his hand as he pushed his wife’s head down. But, miraculously, neither received any other injury.
Flannery was understandably furious, blaming Sydney hood Tom Domican, whose people he had been shooting at for months. Domican was arrested and convicted of attempted murder but the conviction was later overturned on appeal. Interestingly, Roger Rogerson was picked up by police a few days later in the area of Flannery’s house. When they interviewed him, he told them he was there because he was just curious to see the kind of damage an Armalite could do. They released him without charge. They also interviewed Mick Drury, in case he had been tempted to take revenge on Flannery, but he was never a serious suspect.
Flannery carried on with business as usual. On the early evening of 23 April 1985, two children returning home from sports training found a man called Tony Eustace lying in a pool of blood but still breathing, beside his gold Mercedes. He had been shot six times in the back and the attack had all the makings of a professional hit. Eustace had been an associate of Flannery’s boss, George Freeman, and he and Freeman had had a falling out. Freeman had sent his man Flannery to take care of him. However, when police at Eustace’s bedside asked him who had shot him, Eustace, close to death, hissed hoarsely: ‘Fuck off!’ He died shortly after.
Following the attack on him and his wife, Flannery was concerned for himself and his family. He figured it might be safer to move into an apartment. Even safer if it was in close proximity to the Criminal Investigation Branch of the New South Wales Police. So he rented an apartment at the 30-storey Connaught Building, a recently built luxury apartment block in the centre of Sydney, home of celebrities and the well-to-do.
Not long after moving in on 9 May 1985, he received a phone call from George Freeman instructing him to attend a meeting with him. When Flannery went to the car park, though, his car would not st
art. Knowing Freeman was not a man who liked to be kept waiting, Flannery hurried back up to his apartment to call him. Freeman was in a hurry and told Flannery to forget his car and jump in a cab. Flannery left the Connaught, presumably to do just that, and that was the last anyone ever saw of him.
Neddy Smith claims that while Flannery was waiting for a taxi in the busy Sydney traffic, two police officers he knew well drove past. They stopped, asked where he was headed and offered him a lift. Flannery thought nothing of it, considered how impatient George Freeman could be and gratefully accepted their offer. He climbed into the back seat. At the next set of traffic lights, however, the car stopped and another two police officers climbed in on each side of the hitman. Before Flannery could even smell a rat, the officer in the front passenger seat turned round with a revolver in his hand and shot Flannery.
His body was never found, but on 6 June 1997 the New South Wales Coroner Greg Glass found that Christopher Dale Flannery was murdered on or about 9 May 1985. Interestingly, Glass also found that the key to his murder lay with the former highly honoured detective, Roger Rogerson.
Rogerson, on the other hand, denied any involvement. In February 1994 he told an Australian TV show: ‘Flannery was a complete pest. The guys up here in Sydney tried to settle him down. They tried to look after him as best they could, but he was, I believe, out of control. Maybe it was the Melbourne instinct coming out of him. He didn't want to do as he was told, he was out of control, and having overstepped that line, well, I suppose they said he had to go but I can assure you I had nothing to do with it.’
Was he telling the truth? Perhaps it is worth knowing that on 17 February 2005 Rogerson went to prison again for two and a half years. His crime? Lying to the 1999 Police Integrity Commission.
Carl Williams And Family
Australia
The Australian city of Melbourne is a pretty safe town by world standards, with the lowest per capita rate of violent crime of any Australian city. Like any city, anywhere in the world, however, it has its trouble; gangs competing for more than their share of what’s available. Melbourne’s ugly underbelly became highly visible in 1999 when two drug-dealing families embarked on the city’s bloodiest underworld war.
It kicked off on 13 October in the city’s Barrington Crescent Park, located in the tidy, residential suburb of Gladstone Park. Drug dealers Jason Moran and his half-brother Mark had arranged to meet amphetamine manufacturer Carl Williams there.
The Williams and Moran families were two of Melbourne’s leading drug-dealing factions and, as such, they had business matters to chew over. But Williams, always cautious, insisted on holding his meetings in public places in order to minimise the chance of being overheard by police listening devices. So the park seemed like a good spot for the meeting.
Although they remained deeply suspicious of each other, the Williamses and the Morans often worked together when it was mutually beneficial. As they met that day, they did so against a background of escalating demand for amphetamines; business was excellent and sales had recently increased by around 1,000 per cent. It was a good time to be a drug dealer.
Still, there were some undercurrents. The Morans were annoyed with Williams because, they claimed, he was selling his pills too cheaply, undercutting them. They were also irritated by a supply of crumbling pills that they had bought from Williams in which insufficient binding material had been used. There was also the little matter of AU$400,000 that the Morans claimed was owed to them by Williams for the purchase of a pill press. Moreover, in the background was a more personal issue. Williams’ wife, Roberta, had previously been married to Dean Stephens, a close friend of the Morans.
The Morans were a particularly violent bunch, especially Jason, a hothead who thought nothing of using a gun to settle disagreements. He had had enough of Williams and reckoned it was time to make a point. As they greeted each other, he suddenly pulled out a .22 Derringer, firing a single shot into the other man’s abdomen. Stupidly, however, he did not finish the job as he so easily could have, claiming when his brother urged him to do it that if Williams were dead they would have no chance of ever seeing their $400,000. It was the worst decision he ever made and resulted not only in the destruction of his immediate family but the loss of many other lives because, as Carl Williams lay on the ground in a pool of blood, he resolved to kill everyone in the Moran family as well as anyone associated with it.
Rushed to hospital and found not to be in danger of losing his life, Williams was interviewed by detectives keen to find out who had pulled the trigger. He was having none of it, though. He resolutely refused to cooperate, acting as if the bullet had been a complete surprise to him as he went for a stroll in the park. He was going to settle this matter his way. He had always done things his way.
He had been raised in the Broadmeadows suburb of Melbourne and lived at home with his parents until he met and married Roberta at the age of 31. He settled down, but stacking shelves at a supermarket paled for him as soon as he discovered that there was a lot more money to be earned working for bookies at the racetrack.
His brother was a junkie and Williams’s mother maintains that on account of this her other son was always being harassed by the police. Or perhaps it was just because he was an inveterate crook. At the age of 20 he was convicted of handling stolen goods and then in 1994 he went to jail for six months on amphetamine charges. As time went on, though, his criminal standing rapidly increased, much to the surprise of the police. Soon, from a standing start, this suburban drug dealer had become Australia’s most dangerous criminal, heading up a network of reckless young dealers in search of big paydays.
Following his shooting, Williams became a cold-blooded killer, driven by hatred and an overwhelming desire for revenge. He is connected to at least ten murders, and yet it could all so easily have been prevented.
A Broadmeadows family had been involved in a credit card scam and on a November morning in 1999, police arrived to arrest them. No one was home, but when one of the policemen drove past the house again later that same day, he noticed two cars parked outside. The team was reassembled and when they broke the door down, they discovered a pill press, 30,000 tablets and seven kilos of speed, valued at AU$20 million. They also found Carl Williams and his father George hiding upstairs.
Williams was lucky this time, however. While he was awaiting trial, two of the detectives who had been involved in his case, were arrested on corruption charges and it was decided that the Williams case should be delayed until the prosecution of the corrupt policemen had taken place. So, instead of being locked up, Williams was released on bail and was free to wage war on the Morans.
Revenge on the Morans became much easier when Jason Moran was charged with affray and sentenced to 20 months behind bars, leaving his brother Mark isolated. It took Williams five months to get him. Mark Moran was shot dead getting out of his car after driving home. The guman was Carl Williams.
The Morans’ father, Lewis, a man said to still have the first dollar that he ever stole, called a family meeting to decide on a response and, bizarrely, they still did not realise that Williams had declared war on them and their associates. A pity, really, because of the seven men in attendance at that meeting, five were later killed. Some time later, Lewis would take out a contract on Williams, but the $40,000 he offered was not enough to persuade anyone to take what would be a hit filled with danger.
Nonetheless, Williams was the number one suspect for the murder of Mark Moran and his house was raided by police the day after the murder. However, the drug squad, who had been investigating the Morans for years, withheld information from homicide detectives, believing that their investigation was far more important than a murder case that they thought could not be successfully prosecuted.
When Jason Moran was released from prison on parole, in September 2001, it was inevitable that he would go after Williams, but by then Williams himself was back in prison on remand following another drug-trafficking charge: 8,000 ecsta
sy pills this time. The parole board, fearing for Moran’s life, sent him overseas. Meanwhile, in Port Philip Prison Williams continued his recruitment campaign.
One recruit was a ruthless armed robber, Victor Brincat, who was known as the Runner. He had staged around 40 armed robberies across Australia over a period of seven years and had earned his nickname because he would run away to a parked car after each robbery. Williams recruited him to kill Jason Moran when he got out of prison. Moran, by this time, had somewhat recklessly decided to come home.
Incredibly, given his previous record, Williams was again bailed in July 2002, his case still being held up while the drug detectives’ case was pending. In December of that year, Victor Brincat was released and Moran sent him after Jason. Once he was found, Williams would kill him. As Brincat has been reported as saying: ‘Carl developed a deep-seated hatred of the Moran family . . . it was an obsession with him. Carl told me on numerous occasions that he wanted everyone connected with the Moran family dead.’
Williams and Brincat dreamed up numerous hair-brained schemes for the murder of Moran. They would remove the lock from the boot of his silver BMW and jump out and shoot him. Or Williams would hide in the rubbish bin outside the house where he was thought to be staying. Maddest of all, was to lure him to a park where Brincat, disguised as a woman pushing a pram, would shoot him as he pushed the pram past him. They even went so far as to buy a shoulder-length brown wig.