Authors: Matthew Condon
Gallagher recalls: ‘So I said – you’re interfering with the course of justice, aren’t you? I’m going on my own day off and I’m going to ask the prosecutor if I can stand up before the judge and relate that you forbid me to go to the court. So they had to back off.’
Justice Paul De Jersey delivered his judgement to Breslin. ‘You have been found guilty of serious offences, one of induced dealing with a boy under the age of 17 years and the other of assault occasioning bodily harm,’ De Jersey told the court. ‘I intend to sentence you on the basis that the act of indecent dealing was not carried out with the consent of the complainant. That is clearly the proper approach because of the allied conviction for assault occasioning bodily harm.
‘Further, I consider it proper for me to assume, notwithstanding the not guilty verdict on count one, that the jury accepted the boy’s evidence that he was taken to the unit against his will. The acts carried out by you, on the evidence, which led to the conviction are revolting by any ordinary community standard, especially I refer to the placing of the penis in the complainant’s mouth and the subsequent masturbation and ejaculation over his body. There was a similarly deplorable allied assault to the inner leg of the complainant with the baton.
‘The fact that the complainant had a stained history before the events does not lead me to the view that I should reduce the sentence which I would otherwise impose. The law, providing that such conduct amounts to offences, is for the benefit of all children, sullied or innocent.
‘I accept that for the present purposes there is nothing particularly significant in your criminal history. I also accept that you have in the past made a worthwhile contribution to some aspects of community life. On the other hand, the commission of offences of this character has to be deterred. The sentence I impose must reflect the obvious concern of the community that this sort of thing must not occur. I consider that a fine or a community service order would be an inappropriate response by this Court to the sort of conduct of which you have been found guilty.
‘In the respect of the count of indecent dealing I imprison you with hard labour for a period of two years. In the respect of the count of assault occasioning bodily harm I imprison you with hard labour for a period of 12 months. The sentence will be served concurrently.’
Breslin still declares his innocence. ‘I couldn’t believe what had happened to me … that I’d been through all that, that it was still me, like watching someone else. It’s very hard to describe,’ he says.
‘You’re a high flier and you’re doing all these things and you can pick up a phone and access anyone, and all of a sudden you’re dirt and no one wants to talk to you.’
Breslin says he was a naive kid from Gladstone who didn’t know how to handle the big city. ‘[I was the] first-born child with bonny blue eyes and all that stuff … I was the boy from the bush made good, and then had the shit kicked out of me,’ he reflects. ‘I’ve had a rich life in some respects, but [made a] poor choice in compadres …’
Alpha
Sergeant Peter Vassallo of the Australian Bureau of Criminal Intelligence (ABCI) in Canberra finally started compiling his Project Alpha report in July 1985. Ultimately, the 56-page report would contain a special section titled ‘Queensland Crime Group’.
Vassallo had never heard of the Bellino family of Queensland before he started his investigations. The Sunshine State was not his turf. So he began to test the information he was receiving. ‘I used their names with absolutely nothing to go on … this was when I decided to set up my counter-intelligence operation by myself, and started flagging the name to see what the response would be,’ he says. ‘Because if they were protected people and special people, as Jimmy [Slade] was saying they were, then if I started mentioning them … I should get a response.
‘If they weren’t and I got yawns, well, maybe Jim is not on the line. So that was one way of testing and validating Jim as an informant, if I can use that term. Because I didn’t know who the fuck the Bellinos were … what went on in other states was all news to me.’
Vassallo’s report was done by the end of July but the bureau didn’t want to release it straightaway. The report nominated 21 individuals or ‘targets’ involved in the production and sale of Indian hemp in Australia. The ABCI hierarchy, however, questioned the age of the targets – they were too old, they were all pensioners. Could this be true?
‘Boss,’ Vassallo said to his superior. ‘You’re an Assistant Commissioner, yeah? You’ve got a year or two before you go off on a pension. People with power and influence, yeah, they’re fucking pensioners, they’re not the young Turks on the streets.’
Vassallo was undeterred. ‘There was a lawyer who worked for the National Crime Authority [NCA] who lived in Canberra,’ says Vassallo. ‘Every Monday he’d drive to Sydney and every Friday he’d come back for the weekend. And Justice Stewart was the guy that I dealt with there [at the NCA] and briefed … and he was the one that wanted it. He was driving the NCA thing.
‘This guy living in Canberra, he called into the ABCI and asked if the report had been approved for release, could he pick it up? I said the director hasn’t released it yet.’
The lawyer badgered Vassallo for weeks. He asked for an unofficial copy. In the end Vassallo showed him his own personal copy. ‘I had my own copy of the bloody thing because I was the author of it,’ he remembers. ‘I wanted him to know and see it because I knew he’d go and report back [to Justice Stewart] you see.’
About six weeks after Vassallo completed the report, Justice Stewart personally telephoned the Director of the ABCI [Alan Watt]. Robin Chalker, the Deputy Director, called Vassallo and ordered him to the Director’s office on the sixth floor. ‘Up I go and the Director is almost speechless and Robin is there, his face is flushed,’ recalls Vassallo. ‘He [Chalker] said, “Mr Watt here has just had a phone call from Justice Stewart from the National Crime Authority, he said he’s threatened Watt that if the report isn’t on his desk by Wednesday he’d … have the ABCI shut down.”
‘They knew I was stonewalling, that I would not agree to any changes and I was in some heated arguments in various rooms. I was a sergeant of police … the author of the thing, I was the guy who went around the country; I was the guy that mentioned all the games. And now we’ve got, you know, people who are administrators … wanted to drop the thing because of legal fucking reasons, I thought no, I’m not playing this fucking game. Kick me out of the bureau if you must but no, I won’t answer it.’
Vassallo asked them: Did they really believe that a sergeant of police could influence a Supreme Court judge to ring the Director of the ABCI and threaten to have him closed down by going to Prime Minister Bob Hawke?
The report was on Stewart’s desk the following Wednesday. ‘Stewart wanted it because he wanted to go to Brisbane and lobby up there and have it under his wing to get the Attorney-General to sign off the special reference [to give the NCA operational presence in Queensland],’ says Vassallo. ‘The special reference under the Act allowed the NCA to use coercive powers. And it allowed them to do telephone intercepts; it allowed them to do covert surveillance.
‘And of course this is a Commonwealth-funded agency, you know, it’s a national body and it’s now acting independently of the Queensland or a state police force. It acts independently from the government and it has all its powers coming from the special reference, not from local government. Right?
‘So when you’re thinking of constitutional law and all the rest of it, who is in fucking charge and who is running the joint right? From Joh’s perspective … you’re a disciple of the fucking devil, the Labor Party is in charge … so it was purely political. It had nothing to do with the traditional supporting or not supporting organised crime, it was a political statement that Lewis was saying to the Attorney-General – run these bastards out of town. And that’s exactly what happened. They were run out of town.’
Once the report arrived in the offices of state police commissioners, it elicited an immediate response from Queensland. ‘There were three representatives from Queensland who came down,’ says Vassallo. ‘And when the list of targets was nominated by the National Crime Authority, they read them out and there was, you know, everyone got a guernsey as they say, except Tasmania.
‘The Bellino brothers were the target names in question and suddenly the spokesman for the Queensland representatives challenged it.’
Assistant Commissioner (Crime) Graeme Parker, the Queensland Police Force’s liaison officer with the ABCI, attended the bureau’s briefings and received information bulletins. In addition, he was liaison officer with the NCA and the Australian Federal Police. ‘Parker and Lewis had access to everything that was going on in Australia,’ says Vassallo. ‘Those guys had access to all the information.’
The Queensland representatives said the Alpha report had relied on Slade’s Operation Trek report, which they claimed had since been discredited and was no longer valid. Vassallo told them he hadn’t relied just on the Trek report. ‘They actually went there and they sought to attack it [the Alpha report] with a view to having those three [Bellino] names removed from the target list,’ says Vassallo.
‘I told them that Queensland wasn’t the source of the information, [that] there were other agencies involved, and they were dumbstruck. And of course there was fucking silence in the room. I told them the names on that report, the names of the Bellinos in that report, were as valid as every other name.’
The impact of the bond between Slade and Vassallo had been underestimated by Slade’s superiors. While the Operation Trek report had been re-written and dismissed by senior Queensland police, some of its contents mirrored Vassallo’s research. And while Slade was being lured into The Joke by Alan Barnes, possibly because of the enormous knowledge of the drug trade Slade had accrued through the Trek investigation, Vassallo had completed his own sensitive report.
Vassallo was methodical. For years he’d been gathering details on people arrested and charged in relation to Indian hemp plantations dating back to 1974. He discovered at least 250 such cases, and by careful deduction established that 15 Italian family surnames had major connections to the Australian marihuana industry.
Vassallo would eventually conclude: ‘Antonio Sergi … residing in Griffith, New South Wales, is identified as having the most association links to persons arrested on plantations. The second most important person identified using this analytical method … is Luigi Pochi … of Melba ACT.’
A further purpose of the analysis, was to establish not only a relationship between families and persons arrested on plantations, but to test the theory that solid family relationships existed within this Italian crime group. ‘From an analysis of inter-marriage and blood relationships it can be shown that all of the 15 Italian families except [one] are interrelated.’
Vassallo did something else that was utterly unique. He put an estimate on the number of plantations across the country from year to year, and the estimated street value of the drugs. For 1983, for example, he estimated the number of crops at a staggering 46, with a net worth of $376.3 million, given the average price for a kilogram of Indian hemp was valued at $1000.
He also produced some hair-raising data. Murders with links to the industry and Italian crime families occurred by and large on an annual basis between April and August – the non-growing season. This was leading up to and including harvest time, when the drugs were packaged and transported, and the money started rolling in. Disputes were commonplace. Vassallo also concluded about the murder zone: ‘One reason for this could be that the persons responsible do not want police investigations being pursued during the growing season.’
This made complete sense in relation to the slaughter of drug dealer William (Paul) Clarke, 36, and his Latvian wife Grayvyda (Maria) in their house off Pinnacle Road in the tiny hamlet of Julatten, Far North Queensland, on 24 May 1981. Doctors later recovered 132 pellets from the lower right-hand side of William Clarke’s chest, and 80 from Grayvyda’s body. The killer or killers splashed fuel around the house and torched it, the fire so intense it melted metal and burned off the heads and limbs of the Clarkes.
The murder was investigated by a team from the Mareeba CIB, under the direction of regional superintendent Tony Murphy. The double murder remained dormant until Vassallo started connecting a few dots on behalf of Alpha.
Little attention had been paid to the Queensland cultivation scene but Vassallo was convinced the Clarke killings had Italian underworld connections.
Vassallo would later conclude:
As a result of the CLARKE murder inquiry, documentation was submitted by Queensland Police, which was used by the ABCI to analyse the organised criminal activities of persons in Queensland and their involvement in the commercial cultivation and distribution of Indian hemp in that State.
The main objective of the analysis was to identify the associates of CLARKE and his wife prior to their murder on their property at Pinnacle Road, Julatten, Queensland in 1981 thus exposing the extent of William CLARKE’S drug dealing.
Analysis shows that CLARKE and others had a drug oriented association with the BELLINO group.
Vassallo exposed a number of companies who used to launder the enormous profits of the drug trade. He also identified Clarke’s many associates, including drug dealer Terrence Sichter.