The Gangland War (40 page)

Chartres-Abbott was immediately the obvious suspect and was soon arrested.

If the case weren't weird enough, it got worse when the victim told police the male prostitute had informed her he was a 200-year-old vampire. This would severely limit his chance of accepting any daytime bookings.

The suspect's defence began as a traditional one. Yes, he had been to the hotel, but when he left the woman had not been attacked and raped. From there the defence case spiraled from the bizarre to the unbelievable. He claimed the victim told him he was being set up. He also claimed she warned him that vice bosses had cast him as the victim in a snuff movie so he fled the hotel before he could be grabbed.

His defence was somewhat weakened when it was revealed that when he was arrested he had the victim's blood on his pants and her phone in his bag.

A few days into his County Court trial, his legal team successfully sought removal of the accused's home address from any paperwork on security grounds.

It was too late. The killers already knew where to get him. Within 24 hours he was dead.

As he left his home on 4 June 2003, to head to Court, two men appeared. One attacked Chartres-Abbott's pregnant girlfriend and her father to distract them while the second shot and killed him.

He was shot in the neck. Vampires hate that.

There were many theories, the most popular being that his bosses in the vice world, concerned he might do a deal and tell all to authorities about their racket, ordered his execution.

But it now appears the motive was much simpler. Someone very close to the victim was not prepared to leave justice to the system and offered a contract to kill the baby-faced, sado-masochistic prostitute.

The Journeyman, acting as a freelance hit man, would tell police he accepted the offer. But what mattered most was that he also told them he was helped from within police ranks.

He told detectives he drank with the serving policeman Lalor and the former policeman Waters in a Carlton hotel and discussed the hit with them. He made a statement that he asked Lalor to help find the address of the target and assist him with an alibi.

He claims the policeman did provide the address and also helped set up, if not an alibi, at least a set of circumstances designed to confuse investigators.

The Journeyman had outstanding warrants for a spate of driving offences. He walked into the Prahran police station to give himself up just eight hours after the shooting. The theory being that a killer would want to make himself scarce after a shooting and not walk into the lion's den.

The man who arrested the Journeyman at the station over the warrants was ‘Stash' Lalor, though in itself this was not necessarily proof Lalor was a party to a murder plot.

The Journeyman is violent, disingenuous and disloyal so why
would Waters and Lalor choose to drink with him, if indeed either of them had? Or perhaps only one had.

Intriguingly, ‘Docket' Waters had been charged and acquitted of drug offences in a case where a key witness had refused to testify.

Investigators believe a jailhouse deal resulted in the key witness in the case refusing to testify in exchange for a guarantee that a major witness in his upcoming murder trial also remained silent.

In both cases the witnesses refused to co-operate.

The prisoner who was said to have set up the deal on behalf of police charged with drug offences was The Journeyman.

Still waters can run deep.

WHEN The Journeyman made his confession, senior police set up Operation Briars in May 2007. It was to be the most secret taskforce in Victoria.

Until it wasn't.

Age
investigative journalist Nick McKenzie learned of the Briars investigation and approached Deputy Commissioner Simon Overland for comment.

Overland spoke to McKenzie and told him if he ran a story it would tip off the targets and destroy the infant investigation.

McKenzie agreed to sit on the story until there was a breakthrough or until Lalor and Waters became aware they were under investigation.

But the fact that the information had leaked to the media disturbed Briars investigators, senior police and the Office of Police Integrity.

At some point (the date remains unclear) the OPI Director, George Brouwer, became so concerned that confidential police
information continued to leak that he ordered another secret investigation.

And what that probe was to find would expose a hidden world of backstabbing, Machiavellian empire building and questionable personal relationships that led to the very heart of police command.

In November 2007 the OPI activated its rarely used powers to hold public hearings where witnesses are compelled to give evidence and may be called to account for previous sworn testimony delivered in secret sessions.

In just six days those public hearings exposed, humiliated and discarded two trusted senior police officials and left the head of the powerful police union fighting for his career.

The fallout was long and bloody, with prolonged faction fighting, industrial unrest, protracted legal action and damaged morale.

But the main allegation on the table, and the supposed real reason for open hearings, remained unproven.

The central claim made in the opening address by Counsel assisting the inquiry, Doctor Greg Lyon, SC, was that a sinister chain that began with senior police and ended with a maverick police union boss had effectively nobbled Briars.

The hearings provided plenty of smoke and mirrors — without finding the smoking gun. The OPI believes the murder investigation was deliberately sabotaged — an act of cold-blooded betrayal that if proven would result in an unprecedented corruption scandal and certain jail time for the offenders.

The chain, as alleged within the hearings, was that police media director Stephen Linnell improperly passed information on the investigation to assistant commissioner Noel Ashby, who told Police Association secretary Paul Mullett, who passed it to association president Brian Rix. The chain had allegedly ended with the target, Detective Sergeant Peter Lalor.

Linnell and Ashby were the first casualties — both resigning after their damning telephone conversations showed how they lied to private OPI hearings, improperly discussed the hearings, played poisonous internal politics and leaked information.

The head of the police media unit, Inspector Glen Weir (previously Ashby's staff officer), was suspended after it was alleged he discussed the private OPI hearings. Weir was a bit-player who maintains he did nothing wrong but was swept away in a tidal wave of allegations and intrigue.

Meanwhile the major target — Senior Sergeant Mullett — was suspended from the police force while maintaining his innocence and holding onto his position as association secretary.

All may face criminal charges — not for derailing Briars, but for talking about the hearings, an offence that carries a maximum penalty of a year in jail. Another possible breach included the Telecommunications Interception Act, which prohibits discussing possible phone taps, an offence that carries a maximum of two years jail.

Plus Linnell and Ashby may face the additional — and much more serious — perjury charges.

To understand how the claims of a conspiracy to sabotage a murder investigation became public it is necessary to understand the agendas of three complex organisations — the Police Association, the police force and the OPI itself. Then it is necessary to examine how three separate investigations ended up concentrating on the same group of characters.

PAUL Mullett may be the most powerful union boss in Australia — although his workforce does not strike. He has the ear of senior politicians and while he can be a loyal friend, he is an unrelenting enemy.

Both sides of Parliament have duchessed him. He was sounded out to be a Liberal candidate — then former Premier, Steve
Bracks, signed a secret deal with him to try to neutralise the association as a political lobby group during the 2006 state election. When he rings politicians, senior police or top-level bureaucrats, they rarely put him on hold.

Mullett believes that Chief Commissioner Christine Nixon has improperly used her power behind the scenes to try to unseat him — an allegation she rejects. His response, as it always is when threatened, is to attack — first in public and later in the back room.

‘Fish' Mullett is an old-style detective with two police valour awards who has never shied from a fight. Those who know him claim he thinks the Marquess of Queensberry rules are for the fainthearted, the weak-kneed and the sexually confused. He fights to win at all costs.

Believing Nixon was favouring an anti-Mullett Police Association faction, Mullett contributed to a covert campaign against the union's then president, Sergeant Janet Mitchell.

Mullett called on an old mate from his St Kilda days and associate delegate, Detective Sergeant Peter ‘Stash' Lalor, to be his hatchet man.

Lalor became ‘Kit Walker' (The comic book super hero The Phantom's ‘real' name), a notorious emailer who wrote false and defamatory reports on Mitchell that were distributed on the police computer system.

So why ‘Kit Walker'? Both Stash and Fish had worked in the armed robbery squad in the 1980s and one of the squad's highest profile scalps was notorious gunman and escapee Russell ‘Mad Dog' Cox, arrested at Doncaster Shopping Town with the equally dangerous Raymond John Denning in 1988.

Cox had spent eleven years on the run after escaping from the infamous Katingal maximum-security division of Sydney's Long Bay Jail in 1977.

Perhaps coincidentally, while Cox was on the run he also adopted The Phantom's name of ‘Mr Walker'.

The Lalor campaign so enraged the then Police Association executive member, the head of Purana, Detective Inspector Gavan Ryan, that he said: ‘I've worked homicide for a long time and I've dealt with a lot of crooks, bad crooks. Most of them have more morals than the cowards that send out these malicious, defamatory emails against her.'

At the time Lalor was suspected of being just a character assassinator. Later Briars would link him to a paid assassin.

During the faction fighting, Mullett was on the verge of losing his power base. He started to look for another job, thinking his time was up. And then in May 2006 his enemy unwittingly handed him a lifeline. Nixon announced she had ordered a bullying inquiry into Mullett, saying she was obligated at law to examine the allegation.

But rather than spearing the ‘Fish', it shored up his position because he astutely suggested the inquiry was an attack on the independence of the police union rather than a lawful investigation.

While his relationship with Nixon descended into hatred and vitriol he cultivated assistant commissioner Ashby — the man overlooked for the top job in 2001 and who still harboured ambitions to be chief.

Ashby was assigned to deal with Mullett over pay-rise negotiations and the two spoke nearly every day. They talked work and gossiped. Ashby passed on information that he thought could damage his main rival, Simon Overland.

But the OPI claims that Ashby did more, that he improperly discussed OPI hearings, warned Mullett his phone could be tapped and leaked information on Operation Briars, including the names of the two targets.

What is known is that after Ashby told Mullett that his phones were tapped the union boss told Brian Rix to warn Lalor. Mullett says he asked Rix, a former head of the homicide squad, to tell Lalor to ‘be careful who he talked to'.

But he said his warning related to the bullying allegations and the Walker investigations, not Operation Briars.

But within five minutes of Lalor being warned, he rang Waters to say they needed to meet. The question that remains unanswered is why he needed to meet Waters urgently when the former policeman did not appear to be involved in the Kit Walker matter.

Before the tip-off, Lalor and Waters were taped chirping on their phones regularly. But, according to the OPI, their demeanour on the phone changed — as if they knew someone could be listening.

But what was also discovered was that both men had wide-ranging contacts within policing although both had questionable reputations. Waters had twice been charged (and acquitted) of serious criminal charges.

The most generous description of ‘Docket' in his policing days was that he was a colourful rogue. But once he left policing he began to associate with gangland figures who were the subject of organised crime investigations.

In his annual report, OPI Director, George Brouwer, wrote: ‘Sometimes, the most influential member of a (corrupt) group is a former police officer who continues to connect with, and exert influence over, current serving members who are willing to engage in corrupt conduct. Many of these former police resigned from Victoria Police while they were under investigation.' The OPI sought and was granted warrants to tap the phones of Mullett, Ashby and Linnell. The timing and the evidence provided to justify the taps remains secret.

It was a bold and crucial move. As union secretary, Mullett
was deep in complex pay negotiations with senior police at the time his phone was monitored. If it had become public that his phone was bugged or if information on union strategy was improperly used, the negotiations would have collapsed.

Mullett says the OPI targeted him because of the Kit Walker claims. The truth is that an experienced policeman like him would have known that such a minor offence could not legally justify tapping telephones.

The OPI says its probe was into high-level leaks and that is how Mullett became involved. But if so, why was the OPI investigation given the code Diana — the name of The Phantom's long time girlfriend?

It was through the recorded conversations of Ashby and Linnell rather than Mullett that it became clear there was a serious problem. It was quickly established the media director had inappropriately given the assistant commissioner information on Briars. But there is no suggestion that either wanted to damage the investigation.