Bad

Also by Michael Duffy

Call Me Cruel—the many victims of Paul Wilkinson

FICTION

The Tower

The Simple Death

MICHAEL DUFFY

This book gives the true account of the events portrayed in the series
Underbelly: Badness
, but it is not the book of the series and has not been approved or endorsed by the producers or writers of
Underbelly
.

First published in 2012

Copyright © Michael Duffy 2012

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian
Copyright Act 1968
(the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.

Allen & Unwin
Sydney, Melbourne, Auckland, London

83 Alexander Street
Crows Nest NSW 2065
Australia
Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100
Email: [email protected]

Web:
www.allenandunwin.com

Cataloguing-in-Publication details are available from the National Library of Australia
www.trove.nla.gov.au

ISBN 978 1 74343 063 7

Internal design by Bookhouse
Maps by Ian Faulkner
Non-aerial photographs of house and shed at Girvan © copyright the author. Photograph of Gary Jubelin © copyright Simon Alekna/Fairfax Syndication. All other photographs courtesy of the NSW Police Force. Crown copyright retained.
Set in 12.5/17 pt Bembo by Bookhouse, Sydney
Printed and bound in Australia by Griffin Press

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

And the Lord said unto Satan
,

Whence comest thou?

Then Satan answered the Lord, and said
,

From going to and fro in the earth
,

and from walking up and down in it
.

Maps

Author's note

Prologue

Cops

1   Death of a cook

2   Redemption

3   The wire

4   Arrest of a ghost

5   Fear

6   Tuno 2

7   The man from Melbourne

8   Creeping barrage

Killers

9   Death of a cook II

10   Robberies, shootings etc.

11   The man from Melbourne II

Justice

12   The first trial

13   The second trial

14   The company of killers

Postscript

Appendix: the men and women of Tuno

Sources & thanks

This is a book about badness but it is about darkness too. Badness—a term used by some police for evil and criminality—needs darkness in which to flourish. The central story here is of the biggest murder investigation in Australia and how it shone a light into that darkness. Terry Falconer died in November 2001 as a result of an elaborate scheme in which he was to be kidnapped and tortured before being killed and cut up. The murder was arranged by Anthony Perish, his brother Andrew, and Anthony's driver, Matthew Lawton. Other men were involved in the plan to dispose of Falconer's body, and in his kidnapping. They were all organised criminals experienced in acts of violence and they almost got away with it.

It is only because of the unusual complexity of the scheme, and the involvement of so many people, that Anthony Perish was caught and convicted. For almost two decades he was one of Australia's most careful and successful major drug
manufacturers, with such a reputation for violence that few criminals—even long-time informers—were prepared to talk about him to police.

Fear kept people quiet, but not all that many would have known about his operation anyway. Even though he referred to it as a ‘company', its structure was quite loose. Rather than a mafia-style hierarchy of permanent employees, it was an informal network in which people would be engaged temporarily to do particular jobs, a bit like the contractor/sub-contractor arrangements that exist in many legitimate industries. People were told only enough to do their own job, and no more. This has been quite typical of organised crime in Australia, and has always made it difficult for investigators to discover its shape and scale. Only one individual—the man at the centre—knows everything that goes on, and he is never going to tell. The Falconer investigation was unusual in that it led police to contract killings, other shootings, and many other major crimes, and revealed a great deal about how organised crime operates in Australia today.

This story is told largely from the point of view of the detectives involved. It took ten long and hard years for Anthony Perish and his associates to be convicted, a decade that involved extraordinary persistence by a core group of police, assisted at times by dozens of others.

The investigation was known as Strike Force Tuno, and later Tuno 2, and I have done my best to name everyone who had any substantial involvement in an appendix at the end of the book. Their investigation is now ranked as the longest and—because of its difficulty and the scale of criminality
it uncovered—one of the most remarkable in the history of Australian policing.

I thank all the officers who spoke with me, in particular Gary Jubelin, who was Tuno's first OIC (officer in charge) and later its Investigation Supervisor. He generously agreed to provide a picture of his life that provides an insight into the challenges and rewards of a detective's life. Society depends on the police to preserve its safety, yet few of us understand the price paid by the officers involved, and their families. I trust this book conveys a sense of that. Not all members of Tuno were prepared to talk about personal matters, but I hope what follows acknowledges their professional contribution. In particular Glen Browne, OIC for more than half of the investigation, played a major role.

For the best part of a decade, Gary Jubelin struggled not only with the criminals he was pursuing but with his own managers, who often wanted to shut down the investigation, or reduce its resources, because of the lack of progress. I have not referred to them by name but by the generic term ‘bosses'. This is because I have no idea what their motives were. In some cases, I'm sure, they were dedicated officers struggling with the same organisational issues as Jubelin, only further up the line. It would be unfair to imply they had more control over their decisions, or over the actions of the police force, than they really did. In retrospect, Jubelin and his team were right to persist with Tuno, but at times shutting it down could have seemed like a sensible option to reasonable people.

I also thank those police managers who permitted me to talk with officers on the record. The New South Wales Police Force was for a long time reluctant to permit this level of
scrutiny, not least because it used to be systemically corrupt and often inefficient. The corruption finding came from the royal commission conducted by James Wood QC from 1994 to 1997. This corruption was not just a bad thing in itself, but it also diminished the effectiveness of much policing because customs that had arisen to protect the corrupt were also used to protect the incompetent and the lazy. Partly for that reason, some homicide investigations were not conducted as efficiently as they should have been.

These things need to be mentioned because they crop up in the following story, which has its origins in the early 1990s. However, after the royal commission the force went through a series of major reforms and was transformed. It is my observation, based on covering many trials as a journalist, that for a long time now homicide investigations in New South Wales have generally been conducted with a high degree of professionalism.

Although I'm grateful for the access I was given to the officers who worked on Tuno, this is not an authorised account and the police force is not responsible for anything I've written.

While writing this book I became aware for the first time of the extent of the effectiveness of the New South Wales Crime Commission, a sort of standing royal commission with the capacity to suspend the right to silence held by people interviewed by police or tried in courts. The commission can often obtain information that would otherwise never be revealed to law enforcement authorities, and pass it on to police. It backs up this power with considerable analytical capacity and extensive use of phone taps. The commission has a general policy of not talking to journalists or writers,
but the leaders of Tuno told me its considerable contribution was essential to the success of the investigation.

The judge at the 2011 Terry Falconer murder trial placed a permanent non-publication order on the names of certain witnesses because police say their lives are still in danger as a result of the evidence they gave. These are the men known in this book as Tod Daley, David Taylor, Tony Martin, Brad Curtis and Jake Bennie. The name of the woman known here as Tracy Eastman has been changed at her request. This book is based on the same set of events as the television series
Underbelly: Badness
but is an entirely independent project. The differences between the two include the invented names used for the above people.