A Tale of Two Cities (38 page)

He had already confessed to Murphy that he had tried to bribe Drury but still denied he was involved in the murder attempt.

Williams knew it was only a matter of time before the next set of killers came knocking. His co-offender Jack Richardson was dead. His brother-in-law Lindsay Simpson was also dead. He knew he would be next unless he could cut a deal.

He was placed on the top ten most wanted list and arrested in
Melbourne. He went to Sydney, and in 1986 he quietly pleaded guilty to conspiracy to attempt to bribe Drury.

Ironically, only months earlier, Roger Rogerson pleaded not guilty to similar charges and was acquitted.

Williams was given a 12-month suspended sentence but if he thought that would be the end of the matter, he was wrong.

He moved to the Northern Territory and gave up the drugs – at least temporarily – working for nearly eight months as a plant operator.

Then a New South Wales police task force, code named ‘Omega' came knocking. They were the team Commissioner John Avery had selected to find the would-be killers of Drury.

The two targets were Rogerson and Williams. ‘When I was arrested in the Territory I was told: “The deal is this, you can either do a life lagging over a crooked copper or you can tell us what happened and jump the box (give evidence) against him”.

‘I knew I was there to be knocked.'

Williams pleaded guilty to conspiracy to murder Drury and was sentenced to fourteen years jail.

Then he gave evidence in one of the most publicised criminal trials in Australian history.

Rogerson, a highly decorated and brave New South Wales detective, was charged with plotting to kill a brother policeman. Williams, a known criminal, was the key witness alleging that Rogerson was guilty.

In the end, the jury chose to acquit Rogerson, who had always maintained his innocence.

Rogerson was sacked from the force over an unrelated matter.

Williams found himself behind bars after he confessed while the man he claimed was his partner in crime walked free.

‘I am not bitter about it. I was part of the conspiracy and I
have paid the price,' Williams would say. He served four years, six months before he was released.

‘I feel like a new person. It's the first time I don't have to look over my shoulder. I have been offered a new identity but I don't think I need it.

‘Roger beat the charges, good luck to him. I am dirty on him, but good luck to him. I'm just happy that it's over for me.'

Rogerson was later jailed for conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. The charge related to the unexplained deposit of $110,000 in false bank accounts. Key evidence given against the former star detective came from a protected witness ‘Miss Jones', who had once worked for Dennis Allen.

Williams says he regrets the attempt on Drury's life but doesn't believe he broke any codes by going after a detective.

‘The code was broken by some New South Wales police years ago, long before I ever came on the scene. Some of them declared open season on some crooks.' He said some corrupt New South Wales police were prepared to kill to protect their corrupt empires.

‘Basically it was down and out murder because they created ripples in the kickback scheme of making a quid.'

Of Drury, he says: ‘I can understand if he was bitter to the day he died. But I just hope he is remembered as a bloke who stuck to his guns and was vindicated in what he did.'

Williams' attempts to stay off ‘the gear' failed and he returned to becoming a hopeless drug addict.

Riddled with hepatitis and suspected of having Aids, he spent his last weeks trying to kill the shrewd Melbourne policeman who unwittingly saved his life – Brian Murphy.

It was Murphy who fabricated the story that New South Wales police were to kill him at home. If he hadn't, Williams would have headed home on 18 September 1984 and would almost certainly have been murdered by ‘Red Rat' Pollitt.

Williams found a gun but died in August 2001 before he could use it. A few days earlier he missed Murphy in a Carlton restaurant by a matter of minutes.

Timing was never his strong suit.

THE GREEN LIGHT THAT KILLED DANNY CHUBB

He was taken out to sea and set
the challenge of swimming back.
Unfortunately he was attached to
a gas cooker at the time.

 

FOR a prolific drug dealer Danny Chubb was also a kind and thoughtful son. After a morning conference with two of Sydney's most notorious gunmen he popped next door to grab his mother a nice piece of fresh fish for tea.

It was a spur of the moment thing. So much so that when he walked into Bob and Di's Fish and Chip Shop he ordered the fillet and then told the owner he had no money with him and would ‘come back shortly to pay.'

The owner knew the man driving the new green Jaguar was good for it and handed over the fish without hesitation.

He would never get paid. Within two minutes Danny Chubb was as dead as the fish he carried – shot by two gunmen. The unwrapped fillet was found still in its paper beside him.

Both a Sydney murder taskforce and a National Crime Authority investigation codenamed Curtains would find that, as is
the case with many underworld murders, the victim was set up by so-called friends rather than sworn enemies.

Chubb's marriage had recently collapsed and he had moved out of the house he shared with his wife, child and two step-children. While he could have afforded the rent for a secure penthouse he decided to move back with his mother in the Sydney suburb of Millers Point – near Sydney Harbour.

About 10.30am on 8 November 1984, he received a call. It had to be someone close who would have known of the marriage break-up and the phone number of the family home.

Chubb, 43, told a friend who had dropped in he was heading out for a quick meeting and would be back shortly.

He drove a short distance to the Captain Cook Hotel to meet two of his best customers – Arthur ‘Neddy' Smith and Graham ‘Abo' Henry.

Big, brash and not particularly bright, Smith should have been no match for trained and dedicated detectives. But the man they called ‘Neddy' was born in the golden era of Sydney crime and crooked police gave him the ‘green light'. For Neddy, it was better than a royal pardon.

The man himself said of his novel arrangement with the lawmen: ‘Thank Christ for corruption.'

One of his closest friends and protectors was the notorious Roger Rogerson, said to be the king of bent police. And in New South Wales that was saying something.

The Woodward Royal Commission on drug trafficking found that Smith's drug syndicate was moving eleven kilograms of heroin a month.

In 1992, the Independent Commission Against Corruption began an investigation into claims that a corrupt cell of New South Wales detectives was organising the armed robberies.

Commissioner Ian Temby found that Smith was a pivotal figure. ‘I conclude that over a period in excess of a decade, Smith was helped by various police officers, who provided him with information, looked after him when charges were laid or threatened and generally acted in contravention of their sworn duty. The evidence shows that Smith was friendly with a number of police officers and very close to a few.'

When he was finally jailed he wrote his memoirs,
Neddy – The Life and Crimes of Arthur Stanley Smith
, which exposed the system in New South Wales. It made staggering reading.

‘In Victoria, there isn't much corruption. They kill you down there. They certainly don't do too much business.

‘But when I was working in New South Wales, just about everyone was corrupt and anything was possible. Late 1980 was the beginning of a decade of crime and corruption within the New South Wales police force that will never be equalled.

‘There has always been crime and corruption within the New South Wales police force but nothing like it was then. And I was in the middle of it.

‘I had police organising crimes for me to do, then keeping me informed as to how much – if any – progress was being made in the investigations. I had what is commonly known within criminal circles as the “Green Light”, which meant I could virtually do as I pleased. Nothing was barred, with one exception – I was never to shoot at any member of the police force. But apart from that, I could write my own ticket.

‘I bribed hundreds of police and did as I pleased in Sydney.

‘There was no limit to what I got away with. I could never have committed any of the major crimes I did, and got away with them, without the assistance of the New South Wales police force. They were the best police force that money could buy.'

While Neddy and ‘Abo' were well-known underworld figures, Chubb was in many ways more powerful. As the axis of influence
started to move from gunmen to drug dealers, Chubb was well placed to take advantage of the new demand.

The former able seaman had become a very able drug dealer, moving massive amounts of heroin and hashish.

His official criminal record was modest – a thief and a smalltime safe breaker – but through his network on the docks and his connection to Asian heroin suppliers he was able to provide virtually endless supplies of drugs to crooks – including Smith and Henry.

Smith wrote in his autobiography: ‘Danny arrived and we had maybe two more beers, discussed our business then stood on the footpath talking for a few minutes.'

Chubb then went next door to the fish shop, grabbed the fillet and drove the 300 metres home pulling up just before 11am.

As he stepped from his car, two men in balaclavas greeted him. One fired a shotgun from point blank range, removing the left side of Danny's face and his throat. He was also shot four times in the chest with medium calibre bullets.

Not surprisingly, he was dead before he hit the ground.

Neddy would later say that he left the Captain Cook with a woman he refused to name and Henry left in a second car. They then met again at a second pub.

Neddy took a call at the pub and was told the news that Chubb was dead. ‘I had only just left Danny: I couldn't believe he was dead. He had no enemies I knew of.'

As usual Smith was being economical with the truth.

Kath Flannery would later tell the National Crime Authority that Smith had told her husband, Chris, that he organised the murder. ‘He said Chubb owed him money and he was annoyed that Chubb was keeping better quality drugs and selling them rubbish.'

The good drugs, he claimed, were going to Mick Sayers, a major drug dealer and Chubb's good friend.

It was unlikely that Chubb owed Neddy anything and more likely the other way around. Chubb had a reputation for giving a long line of credit to his favoured clients and in the drug business it is more dangerous to be owed money than to be in debt. Debts in the underworld can be cancelled at the end of a gun.

In fact, Chubb had given Sayers $400,000 worth of heroin on the nod, which showed he was certainly not short of cash.

The New South Wales murder taskforce found, ‘Within a period of several years he progressed from a middle-class income, with associated assets, to become a very wealthy man.'

He had a double-storey house at Shoalhaven Heads – a beachside town on New South Wales' south coast. The house was elaborately furnished complete with a huge swimming pool, impressive outdoor entertaining area, a two bedroom flat and a row of professional greyhound kennels. He had bought a block of land at the back with the intention of building a tennis court.

He had also bought two blocks of land at Cunjurong Point. Police believed he had probably bribed officials to make sure he was the successful bidder as both blocks were sold by ballot.

He owned several greyhounds, had bought his Jaguar a month before he was murdered, owned a luxury cruiser and was part owner of a seafood pie business.

The taskforce reported, ‘There are unconfirmed reports that Chubb had several million dollars in overseas banks.'

Certainly, one associate had changed five to seven million dollars at the Pitt Street ANZ branch from small notes for bigger denominations in the previous twelve months.

The associate said the money was for Chubb who he described as a ‘mammoth punter.' Not that he bet on mammoths but he would have if they weren't extinct.

For a land-based sailor Chubb had done well for himself and as a drug dealer he had learnt to diversify.

He had two major sources: a Chinese gang based in Singapore that supplied heroin and a local cartel that included Sydney doctor Nick Paltos and Graham (Croc) Palmer to supply Lebanese hashish.

Paltos and Palmer were targets of a Federal Police investigation – code named Lavender – into a five-tonne hashish importation by Paltos, Palmer, Chubb and Ross Karp, a solicitor.

The phone taps the police gathered gave a unique insight into the New South Wales crime scene.

In the 1980s only the Feds had the power to tap phones and while Sydney police did it illegally on an ad hoc basis it was the federal force that gathered the bulk on the electronic intelligence.

Investigators found that many high-profile Sydney detectives were working with the major gangsters so their operations would be sabotaged.

Certainly the investigators from the Stewart Royal Commission and the National Crime Authority knew they were being white-anted by New South Wales police. At least twice witnesses who were pivotal to organised crime probes disappeared days before they were to meet investigators.

Corrupt law clerk Brian Alexander was in hiding. He knew where all the bodies were buried and knew he could join them. In 1981 an investigator contacted Alexander's mother, who arranged for her son to come in to talk. That night he disappeared – his body was never found. It was said he was taken far out to sea and set the challenge of swimming back. Unfortunately he was attached to a gas cooker at the time.

A beautiful call-girl named Sallie-Anne Huckstepp always maintained police had murdered her boyfriend, Warren Lanfranchi.