The Gangland War (41 page)

Linnell was then set up from within and fed information to see if he would leak. He did — within eleven seconds. It was the perfect trap: Doctor Lyon told the hearings it was ‘flushing dye through the pipes, so to speak'.

The Briars investigation was so secret that the taskforce, made up of trusted homicide and ethical standards detectives, was sent to a separate building, away from prying eyes.

In September, Lalor was suspended but not charged. This presumably means that the taskforce was unable to find sufficient evidence to support the hit man's version of events. So while Lalor is entitled to the presumption of innocence, his career might still be over. Even if he is never charged over the murder, the Kit Walker allegations and his questionable relationship with the hit man via ‘Docket' Waters are sackable offences. And those who had time for ‘Stash' may look at him in a different light when they
consider his alleged links with a career criminal who once shot and crippled a policeman.

On 14 September 2007, he spoke on the phone (knowing it was bugged) saying, ‘Yeah, they've suspended me with pay for the time being. Overland wanted me charged . . . and I'm told — well, you don't know whether it's true or not, but it says Ron Iddles is lead — is the lead investigator in this. He and Ron had an argument over the fact that I should have been charged, and the story goes that Ron didn't think there was sufficient evidence at this stage to do that.'

The rumour that swept policing (falsely, as it would turn out) was that there had been a dispute between Simon Overland and Detective Senior Sergeant Ron Iddles over the handling of the case.

The truth was there had been discussions about charging Lalor but it was decided there was not enough evidence.

Mullett claims the investigation into him was personally and politically driven. Intriguingly, Lalor was suspended on 12 September — the same day Mullett finally signed off on the Enterprise Bargaining Agreement. Senior police say it is a coincidence.

The OPI investigations have shown that at the very least, both Mullett and Nixon had flawed judgment when it came to confidantes. Nixon appointed Linnell, subsequently exposed as secretly supporting Ashby's unofficial dirty tricks campaign as the senior policeman pushed to become the next chief commissioner. And Mullett relied on Lalor, whose deep flaws have also been exposed.

The OPI inquiry also exposed that Ashby was jealous of Overland and resented Nixon. The phone taps showed he was prepared to leak damaging material to further his own ambitions.

The fact that Nixon could not rely on all her senior officers was no surprise to her. When appointed for her second term in February 2006 she told
The Age
she was determined to outlast her
enemies in the force who expected her to leave after one term. She said many had already left but ‘there are a few more who won't outlast me as time goes on'.

IN the end he had no choice.

His reputation in tatters after two days of humiliating cross-examination in Office of Police Integrity hearings, Assistant Commissioner Noel Ashby, 51, saw his future hopes collapse as his past overtook him.

On 9 November 2007, he offered his resignation to his boss Christine Nixon. It was accepted without hesitation.

Having joined the force at sixteen as a cadet, Ashby had risen through the ranks and was eligible to retire with superannuation worth well over $1 million.

But had he been charged and convicted of a criminal offence, courts would have the power to review his payout.

As the assistant commissioner in charge of traffic, Ashby was one of the best-known faces in the force. A hard worker and notorious gossip, he was driven by the desire to one day be chief commissioner.

He worked his way up through the ranks in tough areas such as homicide and moved from investigator to manager as he built an impressive CV, always with an eye to the next rung on the ladder. He gained academic qualifications at Monash University, was promoted to assistant commissioner in 1998 and later awarded the prestigious Australian Police Medal.

Having been beaten for the chief commissioner's job by Ms Nixon in 2001 he was to successfully run a region as an assistant commissioner before working his way back to the inner sanctum.

A smooth networker, he courted colleagues, journalists and politicians, always with an eye to the top police job.

But he saw his colleague Simon Overland as his main rival. Overland, four years younger, a former federal policeman with a Bachelor of Arts in administration, a Bachelor of Laws with first-class honours and a Graduate Diploma in Legal Studies, was given the high-profile job of Assistant Commissioner (Crime) and oversaw the successful Purana Taskforce that investigated the gangland killings.

Selected by Nixon and then promoted to Deputy Commissioner, Overland was clearly the frontrunner to be the next chief. And Ashby was angry. He believed he had been shafted and began to run his own campaign for the top. ‘Don't always put your money on frontrunners,' he once said. He schmoozed Mullett (a man with powerful political allies) and persuaded police media director Steve Linnell to act as his unofficial campaign manager.

Ashby continued to believe he could one day be chief. His taped phone calls were peppered with references to political networking. He never missed a chance to remind listeners that (unlike Overland and Nixon) he was a local and that he could deal with Mullett and the police association, whereas Overland and Mullett had fallen out. He believed the government would want a chief commissioner who knew which strings to pull to provide industrial peace.

And the phone taps showed how the canny Mullett played on Ashby's blatant personal agenda.

In one call, Mullett stokes Ashby's ambition with just a few sly words: ‘Yeah mate, er, I heard though that your stocks are rising, er, in the, er, in front of the premier.'

Ashby: ‘Oh, are they?'

Mullett: ‘Yeah, yeah, significantly, apparently.'

The OPI hearings were to examine whether the Briars investigation had been undermined but ended by showing that Nixon had been betrayed by two of her insiders.

The tapes exposed an ugly side of the police hierarchy but it was the sort of office politics that exists in nearly all large corporations. The difference, in this case, was only that it was caught on tape and aired in public.

Both men persisted in talking on telephones even when they suspected they were bugged. Even gangland killer Carl Williams knew better than to talk on suspect mobiles — and he ended up getting 35 years jail.

What is clear is that when both men realised they were under investigation, they panicked and tried to patch together a protective quilt of half-truths and optimistic alibis. It was never going to work, and the very attempt may have left them open to criminal charges.

It is possible they are innocent of the original allegation of leaking but, like Richard Nixon facing the Watergate scandal, they could be sunk by the attempted cover-up.

Despite the fruitless search for an escape, Ashby would have known that when call after recorded call was played back to him in the hearings that he was finished.

On 15 August Linnell warned Ashby to ‘be careful', implying Mullett's phone was tapped. On 25 September, Linnell warned Ashby he could be called to give evidence at a closed session of the OPI — a direct breach of secrecy provisions. Then the two talked tactics. It was a recipe for disaster — or more accurately, the formula for a poisoned pill.

STEVE Linnell was always more interested in political intrigue than cops and robbers. He was a cloak-and-dagger rather than a blood-and-guts man.

As a successful football writer with
The Age
, he slowly lost interest in the game itself as he became fascinated by powerbrokers behind the scenes.

He cultivated highly-placed sources within the AFL and those relationships were mutually beneficial. Linnell had plenty of scoops and his sources' points of view were always well represented.

After reaching the top in the sports section, he was eventually appointed general news editor. He was popular, hard-working, irreverent and always up to date with the latest office politics.

His decision to abandon daily journalism in 2003 for the highly-paid police media director's job came as a surprise. During the selection process, one senior officer was warned that Linnell was a ‘wild card' who lacked the experience for the job and was liable to be manipulated.

Before he left
The Age
he was warned to be wary of cut-throat police politics because it could be career-ending and to try to temper his locker-room language because it could be used against him. He ignored the advice. Former media director Bruce Tobin offered to provide a background briefing on the job and the key players in the force. Linnell declined, preferring to wander into the minefield without a map.

He soon forged a strong relationship with Chief Commissioner Christine Nixon and became responsible for a staff of 101. He became Media and Corporate Communications Director and controlled not only dealings with the media but publications such as
Police Life
and the police website. Behind the scenes, Linnell wanted to be a kingmaker. He became increasingly distant from the working media and appeared to embrace a role as a political numbers man.

He also started to champion his ‘best friend and mentor', Noel Ashby, as a future chief commissioner. Linnell and Ashby gossiped regularly, plotted privately, talked footy and bagged colleagues, sometimes light-heartedly and at other times viciously. But it was perhaps a one-sided relationship.

Ashby, consumed with ambition, saw his colleague Simon Overland as his main rival and believed Nixon was giving the former federal policeman the inside running for the top job. He used his friendship with Linnell to further his own ends.

When Nixon appointed Overland and Kieran Walshe to become the two deputy commissioners, Ashby felt snubbed and rejected. This further fed his burning jealousy and he rarely resisted a chance to privately criticise Overland as naive and inflexible.

Overland had become the public face of the Purana gangland taskforce and, while he didn't court publicity, it followed him: with each murder and, later, with each arrest, his media profile grew.

Overland worked out of the St Kilda Road crime complex, while the media director's office was in the Victoria Police Centre in Flinders Street, well away from the real action. Linnell felt snubbed and complained that he was being kept out of the loop.

Ironically, when he was brought into the loop he managed to wrap it around his own neck. When he was given explosive confidential information, it would destroy his career.

A committee to oversee the Briars taskforce was set up. It consisted of Nixon, Overland, Ethical Standards Department Assistant Commissioner Luke Cornelius and Linnell. Senior investigators were concerned that Linnell would be privy to the inner workings of the taskforce, but because of the explosive nature of the claims Nixon wanted a media strategy for the firestorm that would erupt when the allegations broke.

The targets of Briars — Lalor and former detective sergeant Waters — continued on their daily routines, apparently unaware they were the subjects of the highest priority investigation in Victoria.

And then the phones went cold. The two targets appeared to have been tipped off. On 15 August, Linnell showed Ashby the
confidential terms of reference from Operation Briars. The same day, Linnell warned Ashby that Police Association Secretary Paul Mullett's phone might be bugged.

 

LINNELL: Did you talk to Mullett on the phone yesterday?

ASHBY: Yes.

LINNELL: Right.

ASHBY: I speak to him probably quite regularly, why?

LINNELL: Just got to be careful, that's all.

ASHBY: Why, is he being recorded?

LINNELL: Just be careful.

ASHBY: Is he being recorded?

LINNELL: Um, I can't say.

ASHBY: He might be?

LINNELL: I can't — I'm not — I can't say. Talk to you later.

ASHBY: Fuck. Can you come and see me? I did talk to him yesterday, right?

LINNELL: Um, come and … ASHBY: I'll ring you on a hard line.

 

On the same day the two talked about Overland.

 

LINNELL: You know, it's not as — it's certainly not as though you've had a fucking easy ride, like that c… (Deputy Commissioner Simon) Overland. That's what shits me.

ASHBY: Yeah, I …

LINNELL: You know, all — all the shit you've had to deal with over the years …

ASHBY: Yeah, and …

LINNELL: and there would be fucking shit that I wouldn't even be able to dream of, and the hard f…ing yards, and that c… swans in at age fucking 45 or whatever he is …

ASHBY: And straight to a deputy's job.

 

In September, Linnell was subpoenaed to appear at the OPI for secret hearings. A series of recorded phone calls show how he
veered from outright panic to false bravado and was hopelessly out of his depth.

Linnell's lack of understanding of the law, the separation of powers and the secrecy provisions of the OPI can be illustrated by his ham-fisted approach to Premier John Brumby's senior adviser, Sharon McCrohan, at the Geelong-Collingwood preliminary final on 21 September.

In a recorded conversation with Ashby, Linnell said he spoke to her about his appointment with the OPI. ‘And I said, “I'm going to a place soon that I can't talk to you about”'.'

He claimed McCrohan asked what it was about and he replied, ‘I can't tell ya'.

He said she asked: ‘You have been called up (to the OPI)?' Linnell said he replied: ‘Yeah, and I'm not happy.'

On 25 September, he spoke to Ashby about the evidence he had given at a secret OPI hearing that day — a clear breach of the secrecy provisions.

If he felt his private conversation with his mentor would remain that way, he was mistaken. Just two days later, Mullett rang Ashby. It was no fishing expedition, as the police union boss clearly already knew of the OPI probe. Mullett asked: ‘Did your mate attend at that location?', and Ashby did not hesitate: ‘Oh, yeah, absolutely.'