A Tale of Two Cities (35 page)

Lennie ‘Mr Big' McPherson: standover man, murderer, rapist and thief with cops and politicians on his pay roll. Below: McPherson kangaroo shooting with visiting American mobster Joe Dan Testa and friend.

‘Tough Tom' Domican: dodged Flannery's attempted hit and most charges levelled against him ever since.

Tony ‘Spaghetti' Eustace: a staunch crook who wouldn't reveal who had shot him.

George Freeman: if he didn't kill Flannery he knew who did. Rubbed shoulders with the cream of Sydney society.

FLANNERY BEATS ANOTHER ONE

‘Anyone who wasn't scared by him didn't know the man.'

 

THE hit man was sitting in the homicide squad office, crying.

A jury had just acquitted him of murder but he wasn't crying with relief. He was crying because the moment he had glimpsed freedom the cell door had slammed shut again. Police had been waiting outside court busting to give him the bad news: he was to be arrested immediately and extradited to Sydney.

One of the detectives who served the papers interrupted the killer as he was giving his wife an affectionate post-acquittal cuddle to tell him it was a case of premature celebration. He wasn't going anywhere except by prison van.

‘He was reasonably accepting,' the policeman would recall. ‘He just said, “You've just got to have a win, don't ya”?

‘But Kath went berserk.'

And that was how Christopher Dale Flannery – and his loyal wife, Kathleen – got the news that although he had beaten the rap for murdering Melbourne barrister and businessman Roger Wilson, he would be charged with another murder: that of Raymond Francis ‘Lizard' Locksley – a Melbourne massage parlour
heavy whose body had turned up with four bullet wounds in the southern Sydney suburb of Menai in May 1979.

Flannery would get a little emotional in the homicide office later. Not out of any finer feelings – apart, possibly, from the possibility that he was frightened of his wife. He was reputed to be frightened of little else, a fatal flaw that would later condemn him to the sort of violent death he had inflicted on several others. Such as Ray Locksley …

‘LIZARD' managed a massage parlour owned by one Ron Feeney but he was a glutton for too many fringe benefits – including free sex. This was considered bad manners and bad for business, which led to his sudden death. That was what the police wanted to talk to Flannery about.

A veteran detective called Brian Murphy knew Flannery so he was asked to try to persuade the contract killer to talk.

According to Murphy, he did talk. Murphy made a statement that Flannery confessed to him as follows: ‘Lizard was hustling the girls at the parlour and trying to undermine Feeney.'

Police believe Ron Feeney ordered the hit, but demanded it be done outside Victoria.

Police claimed Flannery persuaded Locksley to drive to Sydney with him. The Lizard had been bragging to the girls in the parlour that he was a hit man and the rumour goes that Flannery ‘recruited' Locksley on the pretence they were going interstate for a contract killing.

It was said that as they were waiting together, Locksley asked the identity of their victim and Flannery said, ‘You!' and shot him.

In that game you ask a silly question and you can get a deadly answer.

Murphy swore that Flannery told him: ‘One thing I am worried about is that Lizard stopped for petrol at a garage on the
way up. Ray called the bloke over and introduced me to him. I can only hope he can't identify me. I don't think he can because I covered my face a bit.'

Police say after shooting Locksley in the head, neck and twice in the chest Flannery dumped the body and had the gold Ford he was driving ‘detailed' twice on the way back to Melbourne.

Murphy believes Flannery had opened up to him because he feared he would not see his stepson and daughter grow up. After one heavy interview with detectives he saw a
Police Life
magazine on the desk and asked if he could take it ‘for the boy'.

For once the hit man's mask had slipped. ‘He was saying he had made a mess of his life and just wanted the kids to be able to grow up and be normal,' Murphy would recall.

But at that moment two women walked in. One was Ron Feeney's wife and the other was Kath Flannery.

When Flannery saw them, the tears stopped and he returned to his public persona as ‘Rentakill' – the ice-cold killer.

One of the New South Wales homicide detectives who came to fetch him was the personable Billy Duff – a man who would later be dismissed for being corrupt. He was found to have had inappropriate relationships with a number of serious gangsters – including Flannery.

But back then he was seen as a good-humoured detective with a ready laugh, a shallow nature and a deep thirst. And a lot of good suits.

Flannery was extradited to Sydney and sent for trial. It looked an open and shut case until three witnesses turned up to say good old Chris had been in Melbourne at the time of the killing.

In October 1982 a jury failed to return a verdict.

The retrial was set for January 1984 but Flannery was desperate to have the case delayed. It has been said he was told the judge scheduled to hear the case was a touch stern and so he wanted to indulge in a little judge shopping. It is also possible he
had heard a witness was sick and if he could drag out the court process then the Crown case would be weakened.

Either way, he knew that a delay on medical grounds would be healthy for him.

Enter the colourful medical entrepreneur and onetime owner of the Sydney Swans football team, Dr Geoffrey Edelsten.

When the professional healer met the professional harmer there was instant chemistry.

Edelsten surgically removed a tattoo for his new best friend. (He had one on his stomach – LUNCHTIME – with an arrow pointing down to his groin). When he realised his patient's line of work, the doctor saw an opportunity.

Edelsten was being harassed by an ex-patient and asked if Flannery could help. The hit man explained the rates – $50,000 for a permanent solution and $10,000 for a severe beating. When the doc queried the price he was told, ‘Baseball bats are expensive.'

And you can't bulkbill bashings on Medicare no matter how well deserved.

In a tapped conversation between Edelsten and his then wife, Leanne, she asks, ‘Bashing up people, is that all he does?'

‘No, he kills people. Nice young fella,' the doctor replies.

While the patient was never bashed, Edelsten was later jailed for conspiracy to pervert the course of justice for issuing Flannery with a medical certificate to delay his trial.

For Flannery the ruse seemed to work perfectly. His second trial was due to start 31 January 1984 but because the accused was deemed unfit it was adjourned until later that year.

In June 1984 a judge directed that Flannery should be acquitted because a witness had died, meaning that the jury didn't get to judge the case on the facts. Flannery was freed on a technicality.

The witness, Dr Denis Maxwell Gomez, gave evidence at the first trial that differed from his committal testimony over the time of Locksley's death. But as Dr Gomez had died in May before the re-trial, the matter could not be clarified. He might have given evidence if the trial had gone ahead on schedule.

Flannery walked out of court a free man – and decided to make a new start in Sydney. He saw it as a city with opportunities for a man in his line of work.

‘We were never going back to Melbourne,' Kath said. She was right.

THERE was violence in the Sydney underworld but entrenched corruption worked too efficiently to let it interfere with business. The heavyweight crooks made sure they didn't turn on each other.

For bad people, life was good if they were in on ‘the giggle'. The top men were ‘green lighted' by senior police and politicians to do what they liked as long as the lawmakers and enforcers skimmed their share.

There was one caveat – don't leave bodies on the street that could embarrass the police and politicians who were taking a cut.

In the beginning, the bribe money came from so-called victimless crimes such as vice, drugs, illegal gambling and sly-grog.

But it spread to a share of payroll robberies, professional burglaries and standover rackets: serious violent crimes.

At its worst, a corrupt cell high in the New South Wales police force was franchising crime. Many of the well-known Sydney gangsters had become celebrities and were invited to A-list functions to be photographed with fawning community leaders who leaned on them for donations to their favourite charities. Big-time crooks were attending the opening of new bars when they should have been behind them.

Flannery began working for a casino operator called Bruce Hardin but eventually moved up the pecking order and became a heavy for underworld supremo George Freeman.

Freeman was a cunning crook who had grown rich on his ability to read the play. For a quarter of a century, everyone seemed to know he was an organised crime figure – everyone, that is, except New South Wales's finest.