A Tale of Two Cities (36 page)

By the time he was a teenager, Freeman had started his apprenticeship in crime. His record was long but unimpressive.

It included convictions for evading rail fares, stealing knives, shirts, fountain pens, a tin of biscuits and a car radio. Mr Big he wasn't, but he was learning.

In 1954, he was sentenced to three years hard labour for breaking and entering. In the early days, street police seemed to have no trouble catching him but, as his influence grew, he seemed to vanish from the law-enforcement radar.

He was regularly referred to as a crime boss, yet police arrested him for only a few minor gaming offences. He was able to pay the fines out of petty cash.

Freeman made the leap from street crim to mobster by capitalising on the contacts he needed to survive and thrive. He built bridges with other influential criminals, including Stan ‘The Man' Smith and Lennie ‘Mr Big' McPherson, and he had influential friends in legitimate society.

Stan the Man once tried to expand his business into Victoria. He got as far as the airport when a remarkably switched-on top Consorting Squad detective ‘found' a matchbox filled with cannabis in Smith's coat pocket. Stan got the message and returned to Sydney. ‘They run red hot down there,' he said. But he later did jail time in Melbourne, where he teamed up with Flannery.

Freeman was one of the few gangsters who could look as comfortable in the members' reserve at Randwick races with then chief magistrate, Murray Farquhar, as standing around a bar
drinking with wharfies. His network included gunmen, gangsters, jockeys, tame reporters, greedy police and upwardly mobile politicians.

The police he corrupted along the way eventually moved into positions of power where they were able to protect Freeman's growing empire.

Freeman always saw the big picture – even before he was a Mr Big. In 1965, he met suspected US Mafia figure, Joe Testa, and three years later he flew to Chicago to stay with his new friend.

They were to set up a construction company together but there was no evidence they were interested in the building trade.

Freeman became friendly with a US gaming figure heavily connected with ‘The Mob'. The man had links back to the notorious Meyer Lansky. Letters intercepted by police show that Freeman sent the mobster monthly payments in the US and the pair met regularly.

Before one trip, where they were to meet at the Beverly Wiltshire Hotel, the organised crime figure asked Freeman to bring some contraband with him. Not drugs but something possibly worse: budgie smugglers. And he didn't mean small birds.

The US gangster wrote, ‘If at all possible, I would like to have three pairs of Speedo Bathing Shorts, size 34 – one yellow and two in other bright colours. I'll leave it up to you, as you know what I like.'

Sadly, George probably did.

Freeman was shot in the head Anzac Day 1979, but survived. The man who allegedly fired the shot, John Marcus ‘Mad Dog' Miller, didn't. He was shot dead outside his Coogee house six weeks later.

Freeman was said to be the killer. He left his home that night, dressed in black – the colour he wore when he suspected someone would die. As usual George only punted when he had the inside mail.

Royal Commissioner and former New South Wales policeman, Justice Donald Stewart, found that Freeman was linked to race fixing, SP bookmaking and illicit protected casinos. Stewart also exposed Sydney's worst-kept secret – that Freeman had improper relationships with senior police, lawyers and members of the judiciary.

Illegal phone taps on Freeman's phone showed he regularly tipped Farquhar which horses to back. No wonder the chief magistrate liked him. The tips were 98 per cent successful. It would take someone with more character than the greedy Farquhar to resist such an exquisite temptation.

In August 1984, Freeman was charged with wounding Frank Hing, a man named in the New South Wales Parliament as having Triad connections. But witnesses were reluctant to give evidence and the case against Freeman failed.

Freeman saw the old pecking order was breaking down and that new splinter groups wanted a larger piece of the pie.

This was the background to Flannery's rise and fall in Sydney.

Flannery started to push himself on Freeman, bragging about the murders he had committed. He saw his criminal record as an underworld CV and he told Freeman that if he needed anyone killed, he was the man for the job.

Freeman later declared that he was polite to the hit man because, ‘Flannery scared me. Anyone who wasn't scared by him didn't know the man.'

Freeman always maintained he did not employ Flannery but the reality was he paid him a weekly retainer and liked to show off his new intimidator. Freeman recalled that at one party Flannery was determined to leave an impression.

‘He wanted to meet everyone, pushing his own violent image all the time. He wanted people to fear him – and he wanted customers.'

According to Kath Flannery, Freeman was keen to have her Chris on his team. She said he helped raise $22,000 for ‘Rentakill's' legal fees between the first and second trial.

She said Flannery would often accompany Freeman when he collected his gambling debts. His job, she said, was to keep Freeman alive. ‘He was supposed to be between George and anybody who wanted to kill him.'

But if Freeman thought he could control Flannery he was mistaken. The man from Melbourne was a loose cannon with a concealed .38.

As with his time at Mickey's Disco in St Kilda, when Flannery began by working for Ron Feeney but eventually wanted to be the boss, he was never going to be content with only being hired muscle. He wanted to be a player.

He arrived in Sydney just in time for an underworld war fought over turf and egos. There were several factions, each with its own group of corrupt police backing them.

But the brash outsider was a one-man faction, the wild card in the pack.

THE SHOOTING OF MICHAEL DRURY

‘I was a giant in the trade; I thought I was invincible, and unpinchable.'

 

IF only there hadn't been a sale at the Melbourne Myer store.

Then a policeman wouldn't have slipped away to buy his wife some sheets and then he wouldn't have been a little bit late for a briefing on a drug sting to be carried out by a visiting New South Wales undercover detective.

Perhaps then he would have heard the exact instructions on when to move in after the heroin was exchanged and before the $110,000 buy-bust money was out of sight.

Because if those instructions had been followed then one of the main targets would have been arrested outside the Old Melbourne Motor Inn in textbook fashion and the case would have ended with criminal convictions and police commendations.

Instead it started a long, painful and fatal chain of events that would lead to at least two killings and the attempted murder of an undercover detective. The chain would also lead to the ultimate exposure of deep and sinister corruption in police ranks.

Mick Drury was the undercover policeman who almost died. He was young, smart and ambitious and, like most detectives, keen to keep control of his investigation.

It was a New South Wales drug operation but eventually it bled over the border into Victoria. This meant it would have to become a joint job involving both state forces.

This was always fraught with danger as there had long been a simmering distrust between the two groups. The Victorians were sometimes dismissed as ‘Mexicans' because ‘they were only good down south,' while the New South Wales force was often referred to as the ‘best police that money could buy.'

In reality, the drug problem had been recognised in New South Wales and more resources were devoted to enforcing drug laws than in Victoria. The drug squad in Sydney considered it was the best and would tell anyone who cared to listen and those who didn't. Most Victorian detectives weren't impressed. They had seen many of their jobs burned as crooks were tipped off when information went over the border.

In one job that went to New South Wales, Melbourne drug squad detectives photographed money to be used in an undercover buy but Sydney surveillance police ‘lost' the suspect (and the money) after the exchange. Later it was found that the money had been divided among bent Sydney police.

In another job the drug courier didn't get far from the Sydney airport before he was ambushed and his cash stolen. Detectives in Victoria blamed their Sydney counterparts.

In 1981 Victorian police had solid information that New South Wales Deputy Commissioner Bill Allen (who was being groomed for the top job) was the bagman for some government figures and that each Wednesday he would deliver a share of the bribe money to a senior minister. The information was that police collected $100 a month from each SP bookmaker and $5000 a week
from illegal casinos. Further information was that Allen used two corrupt men in the 21 Division, which was police gaming, to run the scam.

Victorian police secretly went to Sydney and photographed Allen getting into a car on a Wednesday and driving in the direction of the minister's office.

When the information was passed to the New South Wales Commissioner his response was both useless and predictable. He sent a senior officer to ‘investigate' whose insightful questions included: ‘Are you in a position to advise me on whose authority those photographs were taken?'

Translation: ‘Keep out of our patch.'

Bill Allen remained Deputy Commissioner – until he was finally exposed as a crook. He was found to have regularly met crime boss Abe Saffron and retired in disgrace after being demoted to sergeant. He was later jailed for bribing the head of the Special Licensing Police on at least five occasions.

But while the Victorians were quick to blame corrupt Sydney detectives they tended to be blind to the crooks in their own ranks.

It was in this climate that they came together to co-operate. The two controlling police were Johnny Weel from Victoria – laconic, tough, brave and straight as a gun barrel – and Mick Drury, who was loud, funny and cocky.

They were different types of men but they were both good at what they did. But above them there were tensions. The New South Wales police arrived and tried to take over while the Victorians tried to protect their patch. If the arrests were made it would be dealt with in Victorian courts and they would get to run the case.

The Sydney police refused to hand over documents and Melbourne officers were slow to come up with the $110,000 for the undercover buy. But eventually a plan was hatched and the deal
was set for the Old Melbourne in North Melbourne in March 1982.

The room would be bugged. Armed police would be in adjoining rooms and units stationed outside in the street.

With a little luck, police would get the Sydney connection, Jack Richardson, the distributor, Brian Hansen, and the major supplier, Alan Williams, in the operation.

On the day it began slowly and then went downhill. Drury and his money were there and so was Hansen, but Williams simply refused to turn up with the heroin. And a heroin sting without any heroin is not much of a sting – more just a waste of time.

After nearly nine hours, Williams – stoned, distracted and still suspicious – finally fronted and the deal was done outside the hotel. Drury pressed a squeal button hidden under his armpit to trigger the arrest.

But the police who were meant to move in got it wrong. They rushed in too fast, and the car that was supposed to block the dealer's escape overshot the spot by thirty metres. It was enough to give Williams an out – and he took it – driving off with the heroin.

He dumped the gear and ran through Melbourne University, where he had once worked as a cleaner, and disappeared.

Eventually, he was arrested but the case was no longer simple. Having failed to catch him with the heroin, the prosecution would rely heavily on police evidence and that would prove to be confused and deeply flawed.

But Williams wasn't going to take chances. He had an inside man in Victoria – a well-respected long-term investigator – and through him he first tried to buy back the key evidence: the heroin found dumped at Melbourne University.

Within a week, the word was out that he would pay $30,000 to have the gear – by then at the forensic laboratory – swapped for harmless powder. But John Weel was told of the plan and quickly
had the suspect powder tested to ensure that even if there were a quick switch, the evidence already existed to nail the crook. This meant that Williams' first attempt to bribe his way out failed. But no matter. At the committal the magistrate found sufficient evidence to send Richardson and Hansen to trial but ordered that Williams be freed.

However, the Crown eventually decided that Williams should be directly presented on the case.

Having seen the flawed prosecution case, Williams knew that he could only be convicted on Drury's eyewitness testimony and he started to use contacts to see if Drury could be bought.

Considering the reputation of New South Wales police at the time, it was a fair bet. But he was a good player out of luck.

His approach, through an old mate, hit man Christopher Dale Flannery, to rogue detective Roger Rogerson and then to Drury, was rebuffed. But it speaks volumes about the state of play at the time that Rogerson could calmly ask a fellow officer to cop a bribe without fearing it would be reported to higher authorities.

Many New South Wales police were convinced they were above the law and frankly, in effect they were probably right.

When Drury knocked back the approach (but didn't report it) Williams and Flannery decided that if they couldn't buy the undercover detective, they should kill him.

On 6 June 1984 Flannery, possibly in the company of his old mate Laurence Joseph Prendergast, shot Drury at his Chatswood home.

Against all odds, the policeman survived and his testimony would ultimately expose the cancer within New South Wales law enforcement.