Gangland Robbers (11 page)

On 5 June 1924 all the men found in the car outside the prison were acquitted of conspiring to release Murray, and Taylor was found not guilty of harbouring him. In the witness box he had given a virtuoso performance, claiming the police were hounding him:

 

I receive no credit for
my good deeds to say nothing of the charitable institutions I have assisted and the woman I tried to save recently and the Soldier Boys I got jobs for….

 

And so on, ad nauseam.

A fortnight before his execution, Murray gave a statement to a news paper:

 

I want to let people know, and especially my relatives in South Australia, and those who knew me as a boy, that I am not guilty of the crime for which I have been sentenced. Tell them that, although I have been a pretty bad lot, goodness only knows, I have never committed murder, nor sanctioned murder. I did not shoot Berriman, nor was I near the place when he was shot. I was wrongfully convicted. Some witnesses at the trial convinced themselves that they had seen me at the house in St. Kilda, and afterwards at Glenferrie, but they just convinced themselves, and we know that people can do that. From the time I escaped from the Geelong Gaol I never left St Kilda except for a fortnight I put in at Port Melbourne. I used to go down on the beach pretty well every day, and would read a book or play with the children there. Some of the newspapers have really convicted me by the way in which they have created feeling against me. I tell you I was astounded when the jury brought in a verdict of guilty, with not even a recommendation to mercy. How different it was with the Pearce [sic] Brothers and those connected with the Trades Hall shooting. Mr. Gorman, my solicitor, pointed out in the court that in no case that he could find had a man in company with another, as I was said to be, received the full penalty of the law, when that man did not commit the murder. Mr. Gorman did all he could for me, but it made no difference.

Here I am, my life is fast drawing to an end. I have but thirteen days to live. Sometimes I hear the clanging of the clocks, and it sounds to me like the hammers of death, but I intend to face my fate bravely and keeping a-smiling. What else can a man do? At night I hear the tramp of warders' feet. I like to see those who know me. It brightens up the day; but I have had to stop the visits of some women friends. They weep, and I don't like that. Colonel Albiston of the Salvation Army, sees me frequently. He is a good friend to me. Sometimes I think of old days in Adelaide, when life was full of hope. Alas, they are gone. The turning point in my career was when as a boy I was arrested in Adelaide and sentenced for housebreaking. Among those whose houses were robbed, you remember, was the late Chief Justice (Sir Samuel Way). I got a taste of prison life then that rankled ever after. I couldn't go straight after that. Why should I expect mercy now? I have exposed the penal system on two occasions, and they have remembered me for that.

I have only a few days more left of me of air and light and food and sensation, all that goes to make up life. Then I will be no more. On the shadow of the scaffold I want to say good-bye to all my friends.
These are my parting words:—I am not guilty
.

 

Taylor and anti-hanging groups tried to organise a reprieve for Murray, and a petition with some 70 000 signatures was presented. A march was organised in which Taylor drove in an open car, graciously receiving the tributes of the crowd, who respectfully doffed their caps. He was with Ida Pender and their baby.
Truth
reported that he provided his handkerchief for use as a nappy.

None of it did Murray any good, including a last-ditch attempt to show that he had a child who was a ‘congenital idiot', and that his father, uncle and an aunt had all committed suicide, which the author ities did not believe added up to his being of unsound mind. In the death cell, he wrote to the man—certainly not Taylor—who had financed his appeal, apologising for presuming on him.
When he broke his dentures
, the prison doctor, Clarence Godfrey, offered to make him a replacement set as a matter of urgency but, according to
Truth
, he declined, saying, ‘Doctor, do you really think it worthwhile?'

He was hanged on 14 April 1924. Earlier,
Truth
had been at its sanctimonious best:

 

In the Great Beyond there is a whole army of men who have gone forth from the earth through the gibbet and the gallows. Angus Murray will not lack for company in this land.

 

Now it thought he had been game:

 

So he died

Give him his due

Poor, wretched, wayward, careless, dangerous criminal

Angus Murray knew how to die.

 

As for Richard Buckley, he was in smoke and remained there. Some thought this might be permanent but over the years there were reported sightings of him, now known as the Grey Ghost, in the United States, in Europe and in other Australian states. One story had him dying in London under the name of Henry Freeman, an early alias. In fact, he never travelled very far. When he was finally arrested, in 1930, it was found he had been living in Richmond and then Collingwood, before moving to Bowen Street, Ascot Vale, with his granddaughter, Pat, taking occasional nightly exercise, dressed as a woman.

There was now a Labor government in office and Buckley's death sentence was commuted to one of life imprisonment. He was released in 1946, suffering from dropsy and not expected to survive more than a few months.
Like so many other early-released criminals
, Buckley found life on the outside much healthier, and surprised everyone by not dying until 15 September 1953, aged eighty-nine.

The Kerry-born Irish robber Hugh Martin, highly regarded by his contemporaries, arrived in Australia in 1926. He had a false passport and was possibly on the run from IRA informers.

Apparently without any convictions in Ireland, he first worked hold-ups in Sydney, including, on 10 August 1930, a bus in Camperdown on which a plainclothes policeman was said to have been a passenger. From April to October that year, there were more than forty armed hold-ups in the city; not all of these could have been Martin's work but a good number of them were laid at his door. The bus hold-ups generally took place on the last run of the day or, conversely, early in the morning. The stolen sums seem negligible by today's standards but, given a working man's weekly wage was around £3, they provided a more-than-adequate living for the robbers. Often, Martin did the jobs in his shirtsleeves and returned to the scene to mingle with the gawpers. Then, late in 1931, he moved to Melbourne.

Around 9 p.m. on 20 November that year, he led a team that attacked Roy Fitzpatrick, the manager of the Swanston branch of G J Coles & Co, when he, along with two assistants and Plainclothes Constable Charles Derham acting as an escort were taking £980 to the bank. They were about to get into their car in Flinders Lane when the ambush took place. In the melee, Derham was shot twice in the head and, although he survived, lost the sight in one eye. It was, said Sergeant Ripper with only a smidgin of hyperbole as he outlined the case for the prosecution at the committal proceedings:

 

A carefully planned and premeditated crime, revealing an utter disregard for human life, which was probably unparalleled in the history of Australia.

 

Ned Kelly, where are you?

The police had quickly rounded up some of the usual suspects, including James Adams, known as ‘Snowy Lancaster'. But there was no sign of Martin, who had actually gone back to Sydney before returning to Melbourne. Martin had intended to hold up the Black Maria and release his colleagues, but when he approached the vehicle, he saw armed police surrounding it. On 31 December he was filling his car with petrol at the Strathfield service station, having again returned to Sydney, when he was arrested, an informer having dobbed him in. Martin was a walking armoury, wearing a belt with two fully loaded pistols, and with a small Colt revolver, also fully loaded, in his trouser pocket. A fourth gun was found in his overcoat. When his lodgings were searched, another revolver and a rifle were found.

Finally, seven men—Martin, Adams, James Scott, Harold Williams (alias Hobbs), Lawrence Stanway and the Brewster brothers, Robert and William—were charged. Martin was charged with four hold-ups in Melbourne, ‘covering a period of several months'.

Committal proceedings were heard at the end of January 1932 and a 13-year-old newsboy, Joseph McGregor, told the magistrate that he had seen Adams with a pistol, standing over Derham. Stanway was also pointing a pistol at the officer, and Williams had three men bailed up against a wall. He saw Williams take a leather bag, Adams fire a shot at Derham, and the three men jump into a waiting car. Under cross-examination, he denied he had been told he would get a share of the reward money and a trip in return for his evidence.

Asked how he came to identify the men, he said he had picked Stanway out of a book of photographs of criminals. When it was pointed out that Stanway was not in the book, McGregor, who admitted he had made a mistake and that it was Adams, then burst into tears and fainted. He was carried out of court without finishing giving his evidence. A second newsboy, Stanley George, pointed out Robert Brewster, Stanway and Williams as the three men he had seen after Constable Derham was shot.

The result was not an unmitigated triumph for the prosecution. The jury acquitted the Brewster brothers and Scott, and disagreed over Lawrence Stanway, convicting Adams, Williams and Martin. On 11 April 1932 the three were each sentenced to twenty years and fifteen lashes. Martin's appeal, in which he said that his co-defendant Harold Williams was not involved in the crime, was dismissed.

On 19 May Stanway was acquitted at a retrial, after Martin had given evidence to say he was not in on the robbery. Martin agreed that it was he who had shot Derham by accident, claiming that another man who was to be in on the raid had squibbed and left him to deal with the police on his own.

Scott and Stanway did not last long on the outside. Almost immediately, they were rearrested; this time, for the theft of a motor car. On 5 August they were convicted of receiving and sent to prison for three and two years respectively.

Truth
had a sneaking admiration for Martin, regarding him as one of the few men who upheld the meaning of ‘honour amongst thieves'. In April it reported that he had told their reporter, ‘I am doing my best to get fit enough to take my flogging decently. I reckon I deserve my sentence and flogging for trusting some of the blighters who were with me in the Coles hold-up.'
They received their fifteen strokes on 1 June
.

In April 1932 Martin had pleaded guilty to robbing William Lewis, a pawnbroker in Bridge Road, Richmond, on 18 August 1931, and also to robbing Norman Byrnes, assistant manager of the Southern Cross service station in Collingwood, on 16 October the same year. Initially, Judge Foster had been inclined to treat him as a ruthless killer:

 

Judge Foster: The depositions show what his object was.

Fazio (counsel): That was robbery.

Foster: No, murder if necessary.

Fazio: I do not think so.

Foster: One of the police witnesses stated that Martin had said to him, ‘If there was a door between us you would never have got me alive.' To another witness he said, ‘I regard my liberty as more import ant than your lives.'

 

After the Lewis robbery, in which the attackers had beaten their victim and left him gagged, Martin had telephoned a newspaper to tell them where to find the unfortunate man:

 

Foster: Very commendable of him. But how do you put that?

Fazio: Had he been a ruthless slayer he would not have done that.

 

After robbing Byrnes, Martin had returned some of his personal papers to him. He owed a great deal to his counsel, Fazio, for standing up to the hostile judge; Martin's twenty-year sentences for each of these offences were made concurrent.

Once more, the Brewster brothers had been charged along with him. They pleaded not guilty, and at the first trial, William was acquitted and the jury disagreed on the charges against Robert. Martin gave evidence on their behalf but, at Robert's retrial, would not disclose the name of the man who was with him. He would, however, tell the jury that the man who was with him was the man he believed had dobbed him in to the police.

 

Judge Winneke: Then why should you be afraid to tell the name of the man who betrayed you? Does it seem a fair thing?

Martin: If I gave his name I would do myself no good and I would do harm to his family.

 

It was then put to him that he had lied in the witness box in the Coles hold-up trial. He was unrepentant.
‘Was I not privileged to lie in the dock?'
Again, the jury disagreed.

Generally, after two disagreements, the prosecution will offer no evidence but this was not so in Robert Brewster's case. In June, Martin once again gave evidence on his behalf, something that did not impress Judge Moule who, in summing up, told the jury:

 

Do you place the slightest atom of reliance on anything that man said?—on one single breath that he breathed? You can, of course, act upon it if it appeals to you in the slightest degree.

 

Some of them must have found it did because, on 11 July 1932, the jury disagreed for the third time. Brewster was again remanded for yet another trial but, four days later, the Crown gave up and offered no evidence, entering a
nolle prosequi
, which meant that if any further evidence came to light, it could recommence proceedings. It did not.

Martin's actions were the stuff of folk legend. On one occasion, when he and an offsider robbed a Clifton Hill service station, he stole a doctor's car, offering him the choice of being driven to the country and tied up, or staying in the car during the robbery. The doctor chose
the former. Martin then offered the man a drink or smoke, and when he said he wanted both, took a pound from the doctor's pocket and bought them at the next hotel they came to. The doctor ended up tied to a bush and a handkerchief was left to mark the spot. Martin then rang the man's home to say where he and his car could be found. He claimed he gave his colleague on the robbery a pound note to post back to the doctor. After Martin robbed a bank in Collingwood, he gave a boy ten shillings to put the money bag on a small truck he was pulling. Unnoticed, Martin walked behind him and away from the scene.