A Tale of Two Cities (23 page)

So who killed him? And how did he get away with it so easily?

The brief inquest that was theoretically supposed to work it all out when it finally sat, raised more questions than answers.

Despite the public interest, and the time available to prepare the brief, it was a slight document – barely a morsel for the eminent legal talent gathered around the bar table.

Joe Gullaci could not represent Gail Bennett and her family because he had been called as a witness. Instead, she hired a prominent criminal barrister, Jack Lazarus.

Lazarus was aggressive but, on instructions, was not out to lay blame in ways that might fan hostilities and make life hard for the widow and her schoolboy son, Danny. Peter Alexander, the knockabout priest who buried Bennett, told the authors that Lazarus's brief was to defend Bennett's reputation for the sake of his son – not to lead a murder investigation.

With Lazarus choosing his punches carefully, no-one else was swinging wildly, either. The result was a predictably thin account of facts already run in the media – except for one thing.

The brilliant advocate representing the police – John Phillips, QC, later to become Chief Justice – was forced to air rumours claiming that two detectives were implicated in the murder. Given that Lazarus didn't directly accuse anyone, it was the only way that Phillips could try to put such rumours to rest.

The men Phillips named, albeit gently, were Paul John Strang and Brian Francis Murphy.

Strang, a popular consorting squad detective later dismissed over a minor matter, was one of the three detectives supposed to be escorting Bennett, but happened not to be standing near him when the shots were fired.

Murphy, then with the new Metropolitan Regional Crime squad – nicknamed ‘Murphy's Marauders' – had no official reason to be at the magistrates' court the day Bennett was killed. He arrived from his North Fitzroy office after the shooting, and said later he'd thought the activity outside the court was a demonstration. Extraordinarily, although named at the inquest as a rumoured suspect, Murphy was never interviewed nor called to give evidence. It was that sort of inquiry. Underworld murders are rarely solved, and this never looked like being the exception.

Even the counsel assisting the Coroner submitted there was no evidence the police knew of threats to Bennett beforehand, and blamed the media for airing matters ‘improperly put in court and never substantiated.' So solicitous was he about the perception of unfairness to the police involved that the police's own QC was scarcely able to lay it on any thicker. He claimed it had been a bumper week for rubbishing the police, and called on the media to give full coverage if the Coroner found that Murphy and Strang were not involved in the shooting.

Which, of course, is what the Coroner did. But not even he, a policeman's son, could swallow his own assisting counsel's preposterous suggestions that the police didn't know beforehand of any threats to Bennett's safety.

While the Coroner found who didn't do it, he didn't get close to naming who did. But time has loosened tongues. The women closest to the Kane brothers say, independently of each other, that Brian Kane got his revenge that day for Les's death in 1978. And several detectives involved in the case suggest independently that they've always believed the gunman was Kane. But, they say, it would be extremely unlikely that a criminal as well-known as Kane was, could prowl the court precinct to set up his escape route.

One former detective says matter-of-factly that two former colleagues removed four roofing nails and levered open the tin fence escape route days earlier. Interestingly, an RMIT gardener recalled seeing a man dressed in new overalls and digging with a new garden trowel next to the fence at 6.45am the week before the murder – possibly on the morning of the Melbourne Cup public holiday when the area would have been almost deserted. This man had a similar moustache to Brian Kane but it was an era when moustaches were fashionable – particularly among squad detectives.

The truth went to the grave with Brian Kane when he was shot dead in the Quarry Hotel in Brunswick in November 1982, almost three years to the day after Bennett's death.

Twenty years on, Brian Murphy was on a short motoring holiday with his wife in Tasmania when contacted by the authors. He said he remembered distinctly the events of late 1979.

So who was the bearded hit man?

‘It was Brian,' he said. ‘But not this one.'

The strange thing, he added, was that he'd seen a man who looked very like Brian Kane in Lygon Street the night before, and noticed he had grown a beard.

Nearly 25 years later another underworld figure was ambushed. It was Jason Moran who was related by marriage to the Kane family.

One of the first men on the scene was Phil Glare, who worked at a scrap metal yard across the road from the North Essendon football ground where Moran was shot dead.

The same Phil Glare who was on escort duty when Bennett was gunned down.

It's a small world, after all.

HOW MARRIAGE GOT A MAN MURDERED BY MISTAKE

The killers probably didn't see
his face in the dark as they
approached from behind.

 

NORMAN McLeod was a good man. But that didn't help him avoid a murder contract meant for somebody else.

McLeod's only ‘crime' was to be driving a car that had previously belonged to his brother-in-law Vinnie Mikkelsen, a gunman whose deadly but dumb enemies killed the wrong man because they didn't do their homework.

Mikkelsen was one of a family of fourteen children. The odds were that one of them would run off the rails, and Vinnie was the one.

McLeod had known the Mikkelsens most of his life and had knocked around with Vinnie, who was a year younger, when they were kids. Later, in the spring of 1969, he had married one of Mikkelsen's seven sisters, Lynette.

But McLeod proved a good worker, father and husband, and police never had any reason to link him to the criminal activities of his tough-guy brother-in-law, who was quick with his fists and reputedly even quicker with a gun.

When Vincent started to associate with some of the local tough teenagers such as Laurie Prendergast, McLeod chose hard work over easy money. He went into the meat business, initially working as a boner after completing year ten in school.

The young married couple knew some of the local gangsters but they didn't fall for the underworld attitude towards work and saving money.

Norman and Lynette had two daughters and continued to save as they chased the suburban family dream of owning their own home. It took them ten years to put together the deposit for their first brick veneer house in the then new estate in Rockbank Court, Coolaroo, in Melbourne's northern suburbs.

McLeod, 33, had a reputation as a good toiler and after the meatworks folded he soon got a job as a storeman at Berger Paints in Coburg. He was popular at work, a member of the social club committee, and organised many of the staff's after-hours activities.

He had a small share in a trotting horse called Perfect Call, paying $10 a month to be in it with friends. The horse did not live up to its name, as it never raced.

McLeod's only other outside interest was a monthly visit on a Saturday afternoon to the First and Last Hotel to have a few beers with his mates. This would happen only if he worked overtime in the morning and when he went to the pub, Lynette would pick him up around 5pm. For a pair of honest battlers, it was close to suburban bliss.

Vinnie Mikkelsen kept in regular touch with his sister – usually visiting the McLeods every few weeks. But then, in 1978, the visits suddenly stopped. He had more pressing matters on his mind.

Mikkelsen had plans to disappear to the other side of the country – a decision that coincided with the disappearance and murder of Les Kane.

He took his two children out of school in October 1978. In January 1979, Mikkelsen was arrested in Karratha, a remote mining town 1600 kilometres from Perth, and charged with Kane's murder.

In September 1979 Mikkelsen, Bennett and Prendergast were acquitted of the murder. But friends and relatives of Kane were keen to carry out their own homegrown version of capital punishment despite the jury's verdict.

On 12 November, Bennett was shot dead in the Melbourne Magistrates' Court as the first part of the proposed payback. Within three weeks Mikkelsen decided to sell his four-door Mazda sedan with the distinctive number plates, ML 737.

The McLeods were paying their way but they were not so flush with funds they could ignore a bargain. So, when they had a chance to pick up a cheap and reliable sedan from a relative, rather than a shonky car dealer, they jumped at it.

Right car, wrong relative.

Like most families, the McLeods had a predictable routine. By 6.30am Norm would be ready to go to work. Lynette would drive him to the factory less than twenty minutes away and then drop their daughters at the house of a woman who would take them to their local primary school.

Lynette would then head to work at the Coles Supermarket in Sydney Road, Coburg.

Around 5pm they would retrace their steps and drive home together. Regular, steady and safe. And only too easy to follow.

On Tuesday, 15 July 1981, their elder daughter had a throat infection and had to stay home from school. Lynette stayed with her, leaving Norm to make his own way to work.

He drove the Mazda to the factory – the same car they had bought from Vinnie Mikkelsen nearly two years earlier.

The following morning the little girl was still sick. Norm was
running late and had to skip his usual shower. While he dressed, Lynette made him sandwiches.

‘At about twenty to seven, he said goodbye, gave me a kiss and told me he would ring later that morning to see how (their daughter) was,' Lynette later said.

It was still dark and the outside light was not working. This meant the two gunmen hiding outside would not have been able to identify McLeod's physical features or see his distinctive bushy beard.

He walked out to the kerb where the car was parked, slipped behind the wheel and put his portable AWA radio in the passenger seat next to him.

Lynette went into the kitchen to put the kettle on for an early morning coffee. She looked out the window and saw fumes coming from the exhaust as her husband started the car.

‘Just about this time I heard about four really loud bangs. I thought it must have been an explosion. I went to the lounge window, pulled back the drapes and had a look at what had really happened. I immediately saw two people running really fast.'

She went outside and saw her husband still sitting behind the wheel. The driver's side window had been smashed. Instinctively, she would say, ‘I opened the car door and turned off the ignition.'

She realised her husband was injured because he didn't move and didn't speak, but she still hadn't grasped what had happened. Then the school caretaker from across the road came over and said to her: ‘Sorry love, there was nothing I could do – they had guns.'

It was only then she realised her husband had been shot. She collapsed, screaming.

Police later established that McLeod started the car and because it was a cold winter morning let it idle to allow the engine to warm.

In those few seconds, two gunmen approached from behind and fired two shots through the driver's side window followed by three more.

McLeod was shot in the head, neck and chest. He died where he sat. The killers probably didn't see his face in the dark as they approached from behind.

The gunmen then ran to the school opposite, through some vacant land and along Yuroke Creek to another road where their getaway car was waiting.

Later, the Coroner said Norman McLeod had been ‘callously murdered in a well-planned operation by two assailants who have not been identified despite extensive police investigations.'

Often, when police probe the background of a murder victim, hidden secrets emerge. Happy marriages can turn out to be shams, seemingly successful businesses can be on the verge of disaster and seemingly healed wounds still fester.

But a protracted police investigation found Norman McLeod to be exactly what he seemed: a good bloke, a devoted family man and a hard worker with modest tastes and realistic dreams.

Detectives found, ‘The deceased was happily married and he does not appear to have been involved in any criminal matters. He has never been charged or convicted of any criminal offences or has never been interviewed for any matter. He was not in any extreme financial difficulty or has any financial problems known to police.'

He was, they concluded, simply driving the wrong car and so had been followed and killed by gunmen too stupid to make sure they had the right target.

THE BITE ON THE EAR THAT STARTED A WAR

They had reputations for
rarely missing and they
wouldn't that night.

 

BRIAN Kane knew he would die young and violently. It was just a matter of when and where. All he knew was that it wouldn't be in his sleep.

‘He was convinced I would outlive him,' said veteran prison priest Father John Brosnan a few hours after burying the man with the reputation as one of Australia's toughest.

The wily old priest was sorry to lose Kane for more reasons than one – his onetime school pupil had been a generous donor to Brosnan's favourite cause, shouting him a trip to Ireland and even a car to get around his parish.

Kane had plenty of reasons to stay on side with God's gang. In the early 1980s, he was in the middle of an underworld war that had already claimed three lives and was still going strong. He needed all the help he could get, the more Divine the better.

Kane made a comfortable living by frightening fellow criminals, among others, and was well qualified to demand a share of
the Bookie Robbery funds. He was not accustomed to taking no for an answer.