Bad (14 page)

‘Oh, how ya going, buddy?'

‘How are ya, you bastard, what ya up to?'

‘Oh, not much.'

‘Mate, come down the Rowers.'

‘I'm at the Rowers.'

‘We'll be there in one minute.'

A minute later, Redmond turned up with Anthony Perish. Taylor left the women to join them, and Perish (referring to the Crime Commission) said, ‘Who do they reckon it is [who killed Falconer]?'

‘You and Undies.'

‘Oh good. Get in the car. Tell your dad [for whom Taylor worked] we've got to go for a road trip and we'll be back in a week.'

Taylor declined the offer. It was around this point that he seemed to realise he might be in need of police protection.

After Taylor told police he would give them everything he knew, he was taken up the coast and interviewed for two days. Then he changed his identity and moved. Soon after this his father was contacted by a stranger asking after his son's whereabouts. The father refused to say, and presently there was an arson attack on his golf buggy in the carport next to his house, causing $9,000 damage.

Taylor was able to provide Tuno with valuable information about the Perishes in general, including—as we've seen—Anthony's request for a police uniform before the Falconer murder, and the existence of Redmond and his role in the abduction. The general picture of Anthony he gave, based on his long acquaintance, was chilling, but it was these last details that were most useful in building the case against Terry Falconer's killers.

At first glance, the main advances by Tuno had had little to do with the work of the police themselves; instead they had involved the decision by Ted Daley to come forward in 2002, and the decision by the unnamed informant to tell the detectives where Anthony Perish was living in 2006. But
both those decisions would almost certainly not have been made without the police activity. Daley was uncertain of his future, but if Glen Browne and Luke Rankin had not called on him that day in September 2002, he might never have talked to the police. And the informant who gave up Anthony Perish's address in 2006 took that risk because he was aware of Browne's enduring interest in the case. The detectives of Tuno had hung on by their fingernails in the hope—maybe the faint hope—that something would come up. And it had. And, of course, they'd made the best of every break they'd got, spending a year convincing Tod Daley to sign a statement, conducting extensive surveillance on Anthony Perish once they learned his location, and identifying David Taylor as a potential witness and persuading him to come over. These achievements came from extraordinary skill, patience, and persistence.

•

Gary Jubelin had been constantly applying to return from his position as Chatswood crime manager to State Crime Command and detective work. In July 2007 he was successful, but didn't get a job in homicide. Instead, he went to the Gangs Squad.

By now Glen Browne had developed a brief (meaning a formal collection of evidence), which was sent to police Legal Services for an initial opinion on whether there was enough to charge the Perish brothers with conspiracy to murder Falconer.

As part of the brief, it was assumed Tod Daley would still be prepared to give evidence, but now this had to be confirmed. He had been living happily in a place far away
for almost four years. He must have thought Terry Falconer's murderers had escaped justice, and the long statement he'd provided Tuno had been consigned to a secure archive somewhere, so he was deeply unimpressed when Glen Browne and Gary Jubelin arrived at his home in September 2007. (Jubelin was there because of his previous involvement with Daley.) The detectives felt bad about asking him to give evidence after all this time, and wouldn't have been surprised if he'd knocked them back. Several of their bosses had always said this would happen. Daley was upset at first—in fact he had the shits: it had been five years since he'd offered to help the police, and in the meantime he'd stayed out of trouble and built a new life for himself far from Sydney. But Daley was strong. He thought about it overnight, and when Jubelin and Browne returned to his house the next morning, he said, ‘I'll finish what I started.' It was an impressive decision: he had actually lost a lot of money through dealing with the police, sacrificing assets and having to move out of Sydney with minimal assistance. He owed them nothing legally and little enough morally, but he agreed to help, partly, Jubelin thought, because he respected the fact that Tuno had done what it had promised all those years ago, and was about to bring the Perishes to trial.

Things seemed to be picking up, but there was another blow in October 2007: Browne learned it was now his turn to rotate out of homicide. After some argument, he was told he could take Tuno with him if he could find another squad to accept it. This he decided to do, sensing that despite the progress that had been made, Tuno might still die if he left it behind. The bosses were still dubious about whether Daley and Taylor would come through in court, with one manager
telling Browne he'd just been ‘chasing rabbits down holes' for years and would never solve the murder of Terry Falconer.

Eventually they came up with a solution: Browne would move to the Gangs Squad, on Jubelin's team, and bring Tuno with him. Jubelin would be the investigation supervisor, while Browne would continue as OIC. This was what happened, in February 2008, but only after a fairly heated argument between Jubelin and his superiors. He told them the Perishes were major criminals who had killed before and would kill again, and that in his view Tuno was within six months of arresting them, if only the investigation could be beefed up. The bosses had heard this before, and were again sceptical. Jubelin stormed out of the meeting, but eventually returned and was told the Gangs Squad would take the investigation. Browne moved across, on the condition that he first used his accrued leave, which was considerable. John Edwards was seconded to assist, and Jubelin was told he had either to finalise a brief for the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) or prepare a report to the coroner saying police had been unable to solve the crime. Either way, after seven years the bosses were sick of Tuno and wanted it wrapped up.

This arrangement enabled Tuno to survive, but it led to one unfortunate outcome. Compared to some investigation supervisors, Jubelin was a very hands-on operator, and Glen Browne—who had made major advances in the investigation in the years Jubelin was away from it—came to resent this. Eventually the two men fell out, although they worked together effectively to the end.

Soon they received some good news: police Legal Services had considered Browne's brief and thought that with the
evidence of Daley and Taylor, there was enough to charge Anthony and Andrew Perish with conspiracy to murder. It wasn't as good as murder, but it was a start.

Jubelin was still engaged with Bowraville, although things didn't look good on that front. In June 2007 the DPP had told the victims' families that there was not enough ‘fresh and compelling evidence' (as required by law) to apply for a retrial of Jay Hart, despite the overturning of the old double jeopardy law. The families, backed by Jubelin, embarked on a series of appeals to a succession of attorneys-general for a retrial, which have been unsuccessful to this day. As a result, the Bowraville murders remain one of the worst unsolved cases in New South Wales.

At Campbelltown, Camille Alavoine's cancer was in remission and she was doing more and more work for Tuno. Finally she came up to Parramatta and told Jubelin she was going to apply for a transfer back to homicide. He advised against it, pointing out that if she got there it was likely she'd be allocated other jobs, but she transferred anyway, and in the event it worked out well and she was able to do even more work than before on Tuno.

One line of inquiry Tuno and the Crime Commission had been working on was the name Redmond, the man Taylor said was a close and violent associate of Anthony Perish who had been involved in the kidnapping of Falconer. But despite all their efforts, they still had no idea who Redmond might be.

On 18 March 2008, surveillance indicated Anthony Perish was on his way to Mudgee, a town several hundred kilometres west of Sydney, on the far side of the Blue Mountains, to do a concreting job. Two detectives from the Gangs Squad
were sent to the town, where they were to call on motels with a photo of Perish, trying to locate him. They arrived at the first motel, approached the counter and were just about to announce themselves when Perish walked in. Making themselves scarce, they followed him around. Eventually he headed out of town, along a road so remote it would soon have become obvious he was being followed. The detectives dropped off and returned to Sydney.

Later a detective made the rounds of the local concrete companies, asking if they'd done a job for anyone in the area into which Perish had been heading. At one plant he was told, ‘We thought you guys would be coming to speak to us.' A driver described how he'd delivered a load to a remote site on Aarons Pass Road, Carcalgong, east of the town. As he'd been backing the truck over the formwork, the rear wheels had started to sink. He'd seen a cavity, and been told by the two men at the site that there were storage tanks beneath the ground. But from the position of the hole, it was clear there was actually some sort of chamber beneath where the slab was to go. Presumably Perish's intention was to cut a hole through the concrete into the space below once the slab was poured.

Dectectives went up in a police aircraft and flew over the area, and it was easy to spot the property where a shed was being built on a big concrete slab. The obvious inference was that the place was intended for purposes of badness, possibly as a meth lab—there was no other reason to build a shed at such a location. The police learned that the property belonged to someone named Brad Curtis, a name that meant nothing to them.

Still, Mudgee was another step forward: in seven years, Tuno had not been able to link Anthony Perish to any contemporary
crime, thanks to the wall of fear that surrounded him, but the concealed chamber clearly indicated serious criminal intent. With this development, Tuno was given more officers, and a major surveillance operation was launched and continued for months. Police identified one of the men working at Mudgee with Perish as a bikie and amphetamine cook recently released from prison.

Officers would be dropped off along the dirt road several kilometres from the site at night, and walk in to conduct covert operations, often in the freezing cold. One night some of the detectives, along with members of the State Protection Group, went in to inspect the shed, which was almost finished, to try to work out the dimensions of the basement. This proved impossible with the equipment they had, in part because another slab had been poured over the original one. The doors had not yet been placed on the shed, so no access hole to the chamber below had been cut.

The detectives hoped that if they kept the shed under surveillance, eventually they'd be able to catch Perish and others cooking meth there. Once they were arrested for that, Tuno might be able to put pressure on the colleagues to roll and tell them about the Falconer murder. This is one of the standard ways detectives get people into jail: by sacrificing smaller convictions to get greater ones.

Things were looking up. Tuno was now engaged on the task of preparing the brief of evidence that would go to the Director of Public Prosecutions, who would make the final decision on whether to charge the Perishes over Terry Falconer's murder.

Tuno investigated the background of Brad Curtis, the man who owned the Mudgee property, but learned little. Much admired in his local community, he lived an apparently blameless life in Newcastle and had no criminal record. He taught boxing at the Police Boys Club and went cycling with friends on the weekend. The only hint that he might not be what he seemed was that he'd worked for some years in the security industry at Kings Cross, which was well known for its links to criminals. But that had been years earlier.

Curtis clearly had some sort of connection to Anthony Perish, but maybe it extended no further than allowing himself to be used as a front for the property purchase. The police would ask him about this at some point, but decided not to do anything yet. If he was more involved than they knew, they didn't want to tip him off that he was under suspicion.

Now Tuno got another break, although this one, like the others, would require much patience and work before it bore fruit. In June 2008 a member of the public approached a police officer he knew and said he was willing to provide information about the Falconer murder. The man was Tony Martin, then in his forties, and detectives met him in a quiet spot in a car park in south Sydney. He told them Brad Curtis was the man who had been contracted by Anthony Perish to kidnap Terry Falconer. And there was more. Curtis, the detectives realised as Martin went on, was someone they knew already—Perish's muscle, the man named Redmond. Martin said he'd done the kidnapping with two other men, Jake Bennie and Craig Bottin (aka Skitz, because of his violent mood swings). This was just about the final bit of the jigsaw.

Martin's story, much of which came out later in court, was that he'd first met Curtis in 1997 when they worked in security together at a bar in Kings Cross. The men were soon friends, with Martin becoming something of a big brother to Curtis, who'd been in the army and had an interest in firearms. Around 1998, Martin was promoted to duty manager at the bar and a security company was hired to look after the door. They kept the old workers but paid them less, and Curtis resigned to start his own security business. In 1999 he and Martin went into business together and for a while did well, providing security at pubs and stores around Sydney. Jake Bennie was one of their staff.

Not long after Terry Falconer was abducted in 2001, Curtis and Bennie were out drinking, and called in on Martin, who was working at a bar. Curtis said to him, ‘Did you hear about the bloke being abducted from the panel beater's shop by the police?'