The Beat: A True Account of the Bondi Gay Murders (41 page)

iv

One of the photographs Phillips had numbered depicted Tim Alger, another close friend of Cushman. Alger, it was presumed from what others had said, was a member of the inner circle of the Bondi Boys/PTK. The police arranged to interview him on Thursday, 7February 2002. On the afternoon before his appointment he called Donovan Reynolds to discuss the whole situation, the fact that associates had been spoken to, how the interviews had been conducted, how not everyone was necessarily a suspect. He for one, Alger said, ‘didn’t do shit’. ‘I don’t even know what they’re fuckin’ goin’ on about,’ he said.

Which proved to be a stance he maintained at Miranda Police Station. Steve Page and Constable Cathy Morieson met Alger in the charge room at the station, explained what they wanted to talk about, asked if he was prepared to be interviewed about the Warren and Russell cases.

‘No,’ he said.

‘I’ll make notes of our conversation,’ Page continued. ‘If the notes are correctly recorded, will you sign the notebook entry?’

‘No. I’m not signing anything,’ Alger replied. ‘I haven’t done anything wrong. I don’t know anything about these poofter bashings. I’ll get a good lawyer and fight it in court.’ End of chat.

But if Alger was reticent, Hajdukovic, when they interviewed him at Hurstville Police Station, was positively effusive. He answered the detectives’ questions without hesitation, showing no anxiety whatsoever as to the consequences of his statement. He also adopted a tone of politeness unseen in any of the other interviews, routinely addressing Senior Constable Foster as ‘ma’am’ whenever he answered her questions.

After the formalities had been dealt with – name, address, date of birth, reason for the interview, employment and so on – Constable Foster asked whether or not Hajdukovic was familiar with Marks Park which, she explained, ‘is adjacent to Bondi’.

‘Yes, ma’am.’ Hajdukovic’s answer came quickly, surely and politely.

‘You are?’ Foster could hardly keep her surprise from her voice. Here was a stated person of interest who almost glibly admitted he was familiar with the scene of what the detectives believed was the scene of multiple murders.

Hajdukovic had lived in the eastern suburbs for 20 years prior to 1997, he said. He was very familiar with the entire region. The park, he said, was behind Hunters Park, between Bondi and Tamarama.

‘Okay,’ Foster continued, trying to regain the composure that had almost slipped. ‘And you’ve previously been to that Marks Park, have you?’

‘Oh, not for, wow – 20 years or so, you know? I’ve walked through the park – probably back in the ’80s or ’90s or something. I haven’t … not for years …’ He seemed to lose himself a little in his own history for a moment, remembering his primary school days, his primary school friends.

And Marks Park was a gay park, he said. Was then, probably still is for all he knew. It was common knowledge, the whole eastern suburbs community would have known it was a gay park. Yeah, everyone knew it. Not that he ever went into it, not since he was a little kid playing football there. He’d walk around the walkway, though, walk from Bondi to Bronte, Maroubra when he was older, he’d stick to the walkway, though, wouldn’t venture into the park when he was older.

Foster showed him the picture of Ross Warren. Did he recognise him?

‘Oh, I was gonna say, yeah, I do,’ he said pleasantly. ‘But only from the news, when they used to show him on the news. How he passed away. But, yeah. But not like, no, just a picture. Was he a reporter?’

‘Yes,’ Foster said. ‘He was a reporter for TV.’

‘That’s even probably where I saw him then, but no.’

Did he have any information about Warren’s disappearance? None whatsoever. And where would he have been at the time, Foster asked? Hajdukovic considered for a few seconds, trying to remember. He’d tell them if he knew, he said, but it was a long time ago. He thought he was living in Brisbane Street and hanging out at the youth centre. Couldn’t really say more than that. The police would have the exact address, he said, because they came around and kicked the door in once, arrested everyone except him, told him he was alright. Foster produced the photograph of John Russell: did Hajdukovic recognise him? No, ma’am. David McMahon? No, ma’am. Who were his friends around that time? Hajdukovic reeled off a list of names, mostly known members of the Bondi Boys: Cushman, Alger, Phillips, others. They were all a crew and they all hung out at the youth centre or at the beach. Did he know about people being assaulted in the area at that time? He’d heard about it but believed it was the older boys who did that sort of thing, rolling people, robbing them.

Alger, Cushman, Phillips, Daniel Forrer, they were all PSK or PTK, he said. Parkside Killers or Part Time Killers, Park Crime Killers. Whatever, something like that. There were two crews, one Randwick, the other Bondi. They used to fight among themselves, fight each other. He was one of the Bondi Boys, not a crew, not a gang, no tag. They were just a group.

Yeah, he recognised people in the photograph book. Twenty-nine people, to be exact. Some were graffiti artists, some hung out with the graffiti boys, all of them hung out at the beach but he knew some of them through school, he said. Forrer was the one who was into ‘bad shit’ he said. And Forrer used to hang out with Cushman, Alger and Phillips.

v

By the beginning of May 2002 the detectives from Operation Taradale had amassed an enormous volume of data: statements, transcripts, expert evidence. Nearly all those connected to the ‘Alexandria Eight’ and the Bondi Boys had been interviewed with only a handful of minor players to be spoken to. False leads had been identified and discounted, live leads followed up and logged, persons of interest kept under surveillance. Detective Sergeant Page was convinced that someone would, at some time or other, provide the police with the vital piece of evidence necessary for an arrest in either or both the Warren and Russell cases. In the meantime, he continued to tie up the few loose ends remaining.

On 7 May Detectives Pincham and Hooper went to Randwick Police Station to interview the former teacher of Ron Morgan’s friend, the teacher who had been told about Morgan having possibly killed a homosexual at Tamarama and another at Randwick.

When the officers and the teacher met, Pincham explained why they were there.

‘What we propose to do, he said, ‘is ask you some questions in relation to a conversation you may have had with a student [Norm, mentioned by French] whilst you were at Redfern Markets some time ago. Do you understand that?’

‘Yeah.’

‘This conversation related to [Norm] having knowledge of another student, Ron Morgan, being involved in murders at Randwick and Tamarama. Do you understand that?’

‘I don’t really remember what was said,’ the teacher replied.

Undaunted, Pincham carried on. ‘What I propose to do, is obtain a statement from you about your knowledge of this conversation. Do you understand that?’

‘Listen, I can’t remember anything about it,’ she said, heatedly.

Pincham was sure she remembered more than she was letting on, was sure she’d been warned not to say anything to him about the matter. ‘We have a report dated 10 August 1991,’ he said. ‘From Detective Sergeant SD McCann. At paragraph 34 to 37 there is mention of this apparent conversation. Do you wish to have a look at this?’

She did, commenting that it seemed to be an accurate summary of what happened when she’d originally reported it. But now, she said, she didn’t want to give a statement because she couldn’t really remember the conversation at all.

vi

On the same day, Pincham and Hooper went to Auburn Police Station and spoke to Norm. When asked about the conversation he’d had with his former teacher he said he remembered it but then, when Pincham mentioned the claim that Morgan had been involved in murders in the eastern suburbs, Norm shook his head. ‘I don’t know anything,’ he said. Nevertheless, he supplied a statement to the police.

After attending St Mary’s Cathedral School between 1984 and 1985 he’d moved to Alexandria High School where he couldn’t recall having the teacher the detectives claimed he had. Nor did he ever have a girlfriend named Olivia, he said, so he couldn’t have told her to tell the teacher anything, much less than that he wanted to speak to her, to warn her against talking to the police. But he did know someone called Ron Morgan, he said. They played football together but they didn’t socialise, didn’t see each other outside, so to speak. Then, about six months after he finished school he’d seen in the papers that Morgan had been arrested for murder but he’d never heard anything about any other murders that Morgan might have been involved in. No, definitely not.

Nor particularly helpful but at least the interview had been recorded. If more interviews had been recorded at the time of the events under investigation it was likely that results would have been considerably different. It was even likely that, whether or not the body of Ross Warren would have been found, there would have been arrests in the Russell case and, with better police handling, in the McMahon assault.

vii

Sitrep 2001/5/11 was submitted on 21 July 2002
exactly
13 years to the day since Ross Warren left Craig Ellis’s house in Alfred Street Redfern, never to return. It was also three years since Kay Warren had first written to the police asking for a coronial inquest into Ross’s disappearance, and 15 months since the formation of Operation Taradale to investigate the cases of Warren, Russell and McMahon.

During the intervening period, sitrep 11 stated, officers from Taradale had amassed over 400 statements. Detective Sergeant Page’s own statement ran to more than 260 pages and outlined all the relevant stages of the investigation. The brief, sitrep 11 said, was being put before the coroner at the present time. It detailed the investigative strategies followed for more than a year, strategies which included: the re-examination and reconstruction of crime scenes; reviews of the death scenes by a specialist pathologist; the utilisation of police divers and undercover officers; new canvasses of all affected areas; suspect interviews (approximately 60 persons of interest); media releases; listening devices used in prison cells and vans; telephone intercepts on 20 telephone services (over 17,000 calls monitored); and interviews of victims/witnesses of gay-hate crime in the various areas involved.

As a side effect of the investigation, while no arrests had been made in relation to the deaths of Ross Warren and John Russell, nor the attempted murder of David McMahon, 14 people had been arrested on multiple drugs charges including supply, cultivation and possession of a range of prohibited substances. In all, a total of 59 charges had been laid.

[1]
Stephen Giles was on his way to a dinner engagement, driving alongside Moore Park, when he needed to relieve himself. He stopped the car and, instead of using the public toilets 100 metres away (which he knew to be a gay beat) he went into nearby bushes. As a gay male Giles later argued that by not using the public toilets it was evident that he wasn’t there for sexual purposes. In fact, he said, he was running late for his dinner appointment and was in a hurry. Shortly after starting to relieve himself he was surrounded by a gang of youths who punched and kicked him and beat him with a small baseball bat. One of the gang said, ‘We’ll get rid of all you poofters.’ Giles later accompanied police in a search of the area and they found the gang in Riley Street, Surry Hills. Adam French was one of the gang.

[2]
Ivan Smith had been walking along Darlinghurst Road with another male after finishing work at the Midnight Shift. He saw a short dark-haired male urinating in the street, facing in his direction. Smith turned to his companion and kissed him. The dark-haired youth called out, ‘You fuckin’ poofters’ and Smith yelled back, ‘Look who’s the poofter.’ The youth, Phillips, ran towards Smith and they started to fight while Smith’s companion ran off up the street. Within seconds, two other males appeared from behind trees and joined in the assualt on Smith, one of them, a tall blond with flat-cropped hair, smashed him in the nose with both clenched fists. Throughout the assault Smith’s attackers continually hurled abuse at him, raining obscenities onto him as they beat him almost senseless. The melee spread to Oxford Street at which point the police arrived and Phillips was arrested. The other two escaped.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Steve Page’s Conclusions

My opinion, Steve Page wrote, based on my experience and observations is that people who for significant periods of time are considering suicide can let their financial affairs lapse. Warren, shortly prior to his disappearance, had his affairs in hand with:

- Recent payment for car registration (Jones statement)

- Issue of ANZ Visa card in July 1989 (Intelligence and Information Centre holdings)

- Payment of driver’s licence on 13/07/89 (same)

- Payment to Radio Rentals on 07/07/89 (same)

I believe that Warren is deceased and I believe it likely that his body entered the water surrounding Marks Park. I believe it likely that the placing of the keys belonging to Warren on the rock shelf may have been done by Warren after being lured to that location, or alternatively, by a finder. I do not believe they were thrown into the position they were found.