Gangland Robbers (31 page)

In his defence, Donaldson, representing himself, told the court how, when he was a child in Macclesfield, Victoria, a bank had foreclosed on his family's home: ‘That year the bank that took the house recorded record profits.' Perhaps a trifle optimistically, he hoped at least one juror
would understand or, at worst, that his explanation would earn him a retrial, but he was found guilty after just fifty minutes' deliber ation. Unfazed, from the time he began serving his sentence, after which he will be deported to Australia, Donaldson began trying to sell publishers the story of his heist.

Donaldson's first appeal, to the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, was rejected. He then petitioned to be transferred from prison in Utah to one in Wyoming and to be ‘unconditionally released', because, he claimed, of a conspiracy to conceal a deal between the government and a witness, Kevin Day. Day had loaned Donaldson the truck he used in the robbery, and had testified against him. Donaldson claimed to have ‘incontrovertible' evidence that, in exchange for this evidence, Day was offered immunity for a series of crimes, a deal that was hidden from Donaldson by a ‘rogue trilogy' of law-breaking agencies. He was so convinced he had uncovered government corruption that he used his likely success in these legal proceedings as another reason he should be moved to Wyoming. ‘The Petitioner has every reason to know that he will prevail in some way … requiring his presence anyway,' he wrote to the court. ‘The evidence in his favor is overwhelming.'

It wasn't. On 30 December 2015 US District Judge Alan B Johnson of Cheyenne dismissed Donaldson's appeal, ruling against his claim he had suffered by not having legal representation. Johnson pointed out the courts have consistently ruled that people who insist on representing themselves cannot later argue that they received ineffective assistance.
Nor was the judge
impressed that Donaldson was trying to find a publisher for his memoirs.

Quite apart from the prospect of a lengthy sentence, the life of a robber is not without its dangers. More than one safebreaker has blown himself up; and there is, of course, the danger of encountering a deadly police officer. Then there is the relatively recent phenomenon of ‘suicide by cop', echoing Jimmy Cagney's defiant cry at the end of
White Heat
, ‘Made it, Ma! Top of the world!'

Suicide by cop began to be recognised in the 1970s, and has two separate scenarios. One is that the person who is killed has mental health problems but cannot bring himself to commit suicide, so sets out to have someone do the killing for him. The second scenario is a variation of the first—he cannot face his inevitably long sentence, and is prepared to shoot it out with the police, possibly with half an eye to escaping but very often with the other one and a half eyes on having himself killed.
It has also to be said
that, over the years, some police officers have been quicker on the trigger than others.

One of New South Wales's greatest, and most dubious, detectives, Ray Kelly, came to Sydney in 1929, and joined the police force. Very early in his career, on 23 August 1930, he was on bicycle patrol when he saw three men in a stolen car in Newtown and followed them into a dead end. They tried to run him down and he leaped on the running board, grabbing the steering wheel. The car crashed into a shop window, and the driver again tried to shake Kelly off, by reversing at high speed. Instead, Kelly shot all three men, hitting one in the head and the others in the back.
Eighteen-year-old Joseph Swan
from Marrickville, already a known standover man, died in hospital.

Nearly a quarter of a century later, on 15 March 1953, Kelly killed another criminal, Lloyd Edward Day, who with two companions had spent a weekend dealing with the safe of Marcus Clark in Central Square, Sydney. Kelly and others had been staking them out for seventeen hours. When the men emerged, two got into a truck, which was said to have been driven by east coast kingpin Lennie McPherson, though he was never charged. The other three got into a car that Day was driving. The police chased them down College Street, Drummoyne, and Kelly called out for them to stop. When they didn't, Kelly, leaning out of the window, fired a number of shots, hitting and killing Day.

Another of New South Wales's high-profile policemen became a member of the Armed Hold-Up Squad in May 1974, and was present when the police shot and killed bank robber and murderer Philip Western on 29 June 1976 at a fibro house in Avoca Beach on the Central Coast. Earlier in the week, New Zealand-born and university-educated Western, also known as ‘Mad Dog' Danny McMillan, had shot and killed bank manager Lyn Callaghan of the South Parramatta branch of the Bank of New South Wales. In 1965 Western had been given nine years in New Zealand for bank robbery and during his sentence had managed to burn down much of Mount Eden Prison. Under the generous Australian bail laws of the time, he had been given bail for two armed robberies in New South Wales on 24 May 1976 and had failed to appear at the next court hearing. The Special Weapons and Operations Section had him in their sights and as one biographer wrote, ‘armed to the teeth with high powered rifles and Remington pump action shotguns known as “Alley cleaners” they demolished the house with gunfire'.
Western ended up ‘as riddled as Swiss cheese'
.

On 19 February 1978, in the last two weeks of a nine-year sentence for armed robbery, Leslie ‘Butchy' Burns, also known as Lawrence John Byrne and once a mate of Neddy Smith, had fraudulently arranged a day's work release for himself from Silverwater Correctional Complex. He certainly worked that day but it was not work of which the authorities would have approved. Along with Allan Ray Markham and Robert Frank Hewitt, he robbed the Sydney Junior Leagues Club, grabbing $60 000. The police had been warned, and Burns was killed when an officer opened fire and shot him through his car's rear window in a chase.

The coroner ruled that the officer had ‘held grave fear for [his] life and the lives of others'. Markham and Hewitt pleaded guilty to a variety of charges, and received fifteen and fourteen years respectively. According to Abo Henry, another associate of Smith, he and Smith later robbed the club.
However, it is possible Smith
and two others, who did not include Henry, carried out the job.

New Zealand-born Tony Edwards, or Robin Horn, was in and out of Australia in the 1970s, then was shot dead by a policeman in April 1985, while on the run after escaping from Long Bay on 19 October the previous year. During that time, he was linked to five armed robberies, in one of which a cashier was shot in the arm. He was staying in Bankstown and, after a tip-off, police surrounded the house as he was about to enter it.
He reached for a pistol and was shot
.

If it is possible to feel any sympathy for armed robbers, one who might garner some is David Lawrence Hunter, younger brother of Sydney wrestler Ray Hunter, who police shot and killed on 12 April 1978. At ten o'clock that morning, David Hunter collected $29 000 when he robbed the Bank of New South Wales branch at Waterworks Road, Ashgrove, north-west of Brisbane's CBD. In the previous twelve months, he had robbed three other banks, making an appointment to see the manager, and then tying up the staff after forcing the manager at gunpoint to bring them into his office.

This time, the police had been alerted when he rang the CBC Bank, which was duly staked out. At the last minute, however, Hunter changed banks, and after robbing the Bank of New South Wales, fled in a Chevrolet Impala. One of the staff managed to wriggle out of their bonds and chased after him on a motorcycle. The police were called and when, two hours later, the police saw the Impala in Moggill Road, Hunter fired shots at them. He lost control of the car, crashed and then fled on foot in Duke Street. A house-to-house yard search followed and, when the lawn locker at one of the houses was opened, Hunter fired. The officer fired back, killing him with a single shot to the head. Hunter, who owned two coffee bars in Brisbane, was well liked by his neighbours and cared for a former girlfriend's four offspring. His bank robberies were believed to have netted him more than $100 000, which he was using to support the children. In October 1978 his death was ruled justifiable homicide.

Fifty-two-year-old Malcolm Robert Bell was known as ‘the Bad Wig' Bandit because of the ill-fitting ladies' wig and sunglasses he wore during his raids, and also as the ‘Friday Bandit'. Bell's criminal career spanned twenty-eight years, and he had served twenty-two years in New South Wales and the Northern Territory before being transferred to Queensland, where he was released in 2000. On 11 October 2001 police shot him dead shortly after he robbed the General Post Office in Brisbane, armed with a semi-automatic.

Bell had escaped into the GPO laneway between Elizabeth and Queen Streets, and ran into two plainclothes constables who were part of ‘Operation Matchpoint', which had been staking him out. He dropped his briefcase of money and a sawn-off shotgun, then produced a pistol, which he pointed at the officers. Inspector Hanbridge described the incident tersely: ‘This male person has been in possession of two firearms and after this confrontation this male person was shot by the police officer and the male person is now deceased.'
In May 2006 a coroner ruled
that Bell's shooting had been self-defence.

It is odd how criminals will sometimes panic when there is absolutely no need. One for whom this loss of nerve proved fatal was Ian William Turner, the so-called ‘Country Bandit', who posed as a Telecom technician to do jobs. On 20 June 1998 Turner, while on his way to commit yet another robbery, this time near Bendigo, was shot and killed by a police officer on whom he had pulled a gun. Turner had for many years worked as a coordinator at Channel 12 before he embarked on his second and, for the time being, more lucrative career.
At the time of his death, he was wanted for robberies
that had netted him between $100 000 and $200 000 in the preceding three years.

Turner died over a possible speeding ticket. About 9.45 a.m. Senior Constable Wayne Sherwell, on traffic duty, pointed his speed gun at a Mazda sedan near Kooreh, 15 kilometres from St Arnaud on the Bendigo Road, and it registered 128 kilometres per hour. Sherwell stopped the car and the driver said he was Philip Rodger Gould, a vet, from Bendigo. He was not carrying his licence. So what?

As Sherwell was writing the ticket, Turner pushed a sawn-off .22 rifle in his ribs and took the policeman's revolver, telling him to place his hands on the roof of the car. Instead, the very brave Sherwell managed to grab at both guns as he fought for them. Now a fine had escalated
into a potential prison sentence. Sherwell won the fight but, instead of going quietly, Turner refused to be handcuffed. Sherwell retreated to the police car to radio for back-up, and now Turner grabbed another sawn-off shotgun from his car and pointed it at the officer. Sherwell fired twice—one went through the windscreen of the police car, and the second into Turner's temple, killing him instantly.

It took six years for Sherwell to be officially vindicated, when Coroner Hal Hallenstein spoke of his ‘exemplary restraint and self-control'. He eventually received the Victoria Police Valour Award for bravery.

In the mid- and late 1980s, the Melbourne police and the underworld were at each other's throats. This was often with fatal, and sometimes tragic, results. From 1987 to 1989 the police shot dead eleven suspects. And the underworld ultimately retaliated in a cowardly fashion.

In the six months to April 1989, the dead included Mark Militano, a member of a group of criminals from the Flemington–Ascot Vale area that specialised in armed robberies. On 25 March 1987 members of the Armed Robbery Squad shot him six times outside his Kensington flat when they went to question him. One bullet lodged in the back of his neck as he was running away, and the coroner found that he had been pointing a gun over his shoulder before he was shot. Santo Mercuri, a member of Militano's team, survived but died in prison. He was convicted of an armed robbery on an Armaguard van on 11 July 1988, when $33 000 was stolen and security guard Dominik Hefti was shot dead. A fitness fanatic feared by other inmates, Mercuri died in Barwon Prison, following a heart attack on 22 July 2000.

In perhaps the most celebrated case, on 11 October 1988 Graeme Jensen left a hardware store in Narre Warren, an east Melbourne suburb, and climbed into his Commodore. Members of the Armed Robbery Squad approached and told him not to move. Instead, he accelerated. The officers opened fire and Jensen was shot in the back of the head. By the time his car crashed into a power pole, he was already dead. At the inquest, there was evidence that the police saw him pick up a weapon and they fired to protect themselves. A sawn-off bolt-action shotgun was produced, which they said had been found in the car. Jensen's friends and relations would not accept this evidence.

There is no doubt that Jensen, then thirty-three and described as something of a ladykiller, was an armed robber by profession. His criminal career began early—when he was fourteen, he and four others
used coathangers to pull six fur coats, valued at $2468, through a letterbox opening in the door of a Melbourne shop. At fifteen he became one of Australia's youngest bank robbers when he stole $1363 from the National Australia Bank in Fitzroy. His arresting officer left a note on his file: ‘This lad, in my opinion, will in the future become a very active criminal. He requires firm handling.' This was followed by imprisonment for housebreaking; and, when he was twenty-three, three more charges of armed robbery, this time in Canberra, which netted $70 000. A note by the arresting officer on this occasion read:

 

Offender is a very dangerous type of person who, according to his girlfriends and other persons, always slept with his shotgun loaded under his bed. When arrested also had the weapon fully loaded in his possession. Warning, will finish shooting a policeman or some other person he has a dislike to if given an opportunity. Treat with caution.