A Tale of Two Cities (42 page)

Eustace, known as Liverpool Tony, Spaghetti Eustace and the less complimentary Useless Eustace, was a good heroin dealer but a lousy legitimate businessman. He was a not-so-silent partner in ‘Tony's Bar' in Double Bay and dabbled in the export business with spectacular lack of success. He owed $50,000 to a wholesale seafood business after he couldn't pay for lobsters he exported to Greece in 1980. Clearly he ignored the old proverb: Beware of Greeks making bisque.

He also laundered $30,000 in drug money through a business selling factory-seconds towels. When the Sydney underworld war heated up, Eustace was one of the few who remained loyal to Flannery. After the first attempt on Flannery's life in January 1985 it was Eustace who helped hide him. They were known to be so close that Tony was on a short list of suspects thought to have helped Flannery go hunting for Tom Domican for a payback shooting.

Certainly, Domican later told police he suspected Flannery, Eustace and a Melbourne painter and docker as the hit team that tried to kill him near his home.

If it were Eustace helping that day, he was about as good an assassin as he was a seafood exporter. They got the wrong bloke. On 3 April, Domican's mate, Victor John Camilleri, was shot and wounded while Domican did not have a hair on his balding head harmed.

From November 1984, friends say, Eustace was apprehensive and began to fear that mid-range drug dealers with big-time ambitions could be an endangered species.

And his fears grew as he found himself offside with both sides of the warring bodies.

As a friend of Flannery's and a suspect in the Camilleri shooting he was a target for the so-called Domican camp (although Tom has always maintained he was not a gangster but a misunderstood political number cruncher).

When asked why he was concerned, Eustace told a friend: ‘Some madman from the western suburbs wants to run Sydney.'

As radio commentator Steve Price lives in the east, he probably meant Domican. In fact, as Price didn't move to Sydney until years later, he almost certainly meant Domican.

He began to move from house to house regularly and told friends he could be ‘off' because he had been protecting Chris Flannery. He started to carry a gun and his fears increased when he spotted two men using walkie-talkies watching him while he was eating in an upmarket restaurant in Double Bay.

Later, he thought two men were following him in a green Commodore. Police would allege that Domican and one Roy Thurgar had access to an identical Commodore registered in the name of a close family associate.

But while Eustace was dodging the Domican faction he had reasons to fear the George Freeman forces for several reasons.

According to Kath Flannery, when Freeman wanted Chris to kill Mick Sayers the hit man sought Eustace's advice.

They met at the Royal Oak Hotel in Double Bay where Eustace told Flannery he shouldn't carry out the hit because Sayers was a ‘good bloke.' Intriguingly, he also said Sayers wouldn't be a problem because he was soon to be arrested by the Federal Police on drug charges.

Tony was on the money. In July 1984 Sayers was arrested as part of a joint federal-state police operation and spent four months inside before he made bail.

But if Freeman knew that Eustace had persuaded his favourite hit man to refuse a contract he would have been unimpressed.

Worse was to follow. The man with few words opened his mouth too much. He asked a hypothetical question to another crook: ‘What happens if George goes?'

The crook reported it to Freeman, who was already on war footing. Those five words were effectively Eustace's death sentence. And what better way to test Flannery's loyalty than to get him to kill one of his best mates?

On 23 April 1985, the weather in Sydney matched Tony Eustace's mood – both were filthy. He had taken the risk of protecting and hiding Flannery – and now the Melbourne hit man was asking him for $25,000, saying he was set to disappear overseas.

Eustace got a call while sitting at his favourite restaurant that afternoon from Flannery wanting yet another favour.

Enough was enough. He agreed to meet Flannery but his patience was running out. ‘Fuck these Melbourne people,' he said after hanging up.

He was running late and parked his car near the meeting place at the Koala Inn. The Mercedes was booked for being at an expired metre at 2.35pm. Nearby a brown Valiant was booked for being at an expired metre around the same time.

Someone had bought the car less than two weeks earlier for $1945 cash under a false name. It was, of course, Flannery's favourite make of car to use when carrying out a hit.

But according to Kath, Flannery was worried for his mate and even warned him he should stop driving his readily identifiable gold Mercedes as it made him an easy target.

As they left the meeting Eustace promised to get some money and meet later at the Airport Hilton. It is reasonable to assume the meeting place was picked because Eustace believed that once he gave him the money Flannery would head overseas and become someone else's problem.

Tony went back to Tony's Bar and had a drink with a mate – who bought him a second and was keen to settle in for the evening. But Eustace was in a hurry and said he had to go to the airport. It was pouring rain and his mate told him he was crazy to head out but Tony said he had no choice.

Before he left he went over to one of the staff who was owed wages and peeled off $500 from a large stack of cash he had inside a paper bag tucked in his shirt. Police believe this was the money he was to give to Flannery.

Eustace headed towards the airport in the rain. He didn't make it. He parked in Gertrude Street, just 200 metres from the hotel, about 6.30pm. Several witnesses said they saw a gold Mercedes parked nose to nose with a brown Valiant.

They saw the internal and external lights illuminating the empty Mercedes and three people in the Valiant.

Witnesses heard several shots before watching a man holding a gun run back to the Valiant, do a three-point turn and drive away. Some said they saw another person in the front seat of the Valiant. We will never know the identity of the second man – or woman. One intriguing theory is that the second person in the car was George Freeman himself, who used Flannery to lure the victim to the dark street for the ambush.

Certainly Freeman was not home that night and he went out wearing his ‘lucky' black outfit – the clothes he wore when he was about to commit a major crime.

In phone taps recorded during the Federal Police's Operation Lavender, Freeman's bent doctor Nick Paltos was caught talking about the case with Graham ‘Croc' Palmer.

Paltos:
I'll tell you who shot Useless, I've got to be honest with you
.

Palmer:
Freeman?

Paltos:
Yeah, he did. George Freeman, he shot him, all right … He owned up to it today.

Police believe Eustace hopped into the Valiant and gave Chris his $25,000 farewell present. After his last goodbye and as he walked back to his car Flannery (or possibly Freeman) hopped out and emptied six shots from a .45 pistol into the back of his good friend.

About fifteen minutes later a local young man saw the man on the ground and called out, ‘Are you OK?'

‘I've been shot,' the dying man responded.

He was asked how many times and muttered, ‘About four or five times.' He was the master of understatement.

The young man asked who did it and Eustace answered: ‘I just stopped to help them – they looked as though they needed help and they shot me.'

To the end Eustace showed Flannery loyalty he didn't deserve.

The Valiant was later recovered in the airport carpark. It had travelled only about 170 kilometres since its new owner had bought it on 12 April.

At 5pm on 23 April, Flannery hired a Falcon from Budget Rentals at Mascot Airport. He returned it the following day and paid $73.40.

In what must have been seen as an amazing coincidence, just three weeks earlier when Flannery was dumping a Valiant he used at the time Camilleri was shot, Kath hired another car – also from the airport.

The murder taskforce concluded: ‘The evidence points to Flannery as the murderer.' The National Crime Authority went further. ‘It is the opinion of the investigators that Christopher Dale Flannery, quite probably through his association with George Freeman, played a major role in the murder.'

Flannery may have got away with the murder but his cards were marked.

By killing (or setting up) his best ally he showed all the warring elements – and more importantly the police power brokers – he was prepared to turn on anyone, which meant no-one was safe.

The underworld war was bad for business. If it kept going it could prompt a royal commission that would expose the fact that corrupt police ‘green lighted' favoured gangsters to let them commit crimes with impunity.

Flannery was out of control. Freeman, Neddy Smith, McCann, Lennie McPherson and key detectives knew he had passed his use-by date.

The ‘green light' racket meant selected crooks could do anything short of killing a policeman. But Flannery had already tried to kill undercover detective Mick Drury.

And then he made the mistake of threatening the wrong man. According to Neddy Smith, during a vicious argument Flannery once yelled at a powerful police figure: ‘You're not a protected species, you know – you're not a fucking koala bear.'

But neither was he. And he was the one who would soon be extinct.

VALE CHRISTOPHER DALE, ROGUE MALE

‘My first reaction was
one of relief. I hoped he'd
been killed.'

 

BY early 1985 Chris Flannery was running out of friends. This was hardly surprising, as he'd killed most of them.

Flannery had built a fearsome reputation for killing on command but when an attack dog begins to snarl at its master it's time for the big sleep.

Flannery had made too many enemies in the underworld. Police alleged that Sydney hard man Tom Domican was out to kill him, although no charges would ever stick. A heavy drug dealer called Barry McCann was no fan of the mad dog from Melbourne, either. This may have related to the fact that Flannery had once punched McCann's wife in the face. He later sent her flowers as an apology but a left hook followed by a few orchids was never going to work.

Flannery's boss George Freeman had lost patience with him and was a little frightened of the unpredictable gunman. Flannery was said to have refused Freeman's contract to kill Mick Sayers – so he was no longer obedient.

He had also killed his good friend Tony Eustace – proof that he was no longer loyal. He had shown he would kill anyone for anybody if the price were right or even if he just felt like it. He was on every team and therefore he was on no-one's. It was a dangerous place to be.

But more importantly, perhaps fatally, Flannery had lost his pull with the corrupt detectives who were the main stabilising element in the Sydney underworld.

Flannery had threatened police and had shot one – undercover detective Mick Drury. Even when the notorious Neddy Smith had been given the ‘green light' to pull virtually any crime he wanted, he was warned he would be protected only if he did not harm police.

In the end, Flannery had managed to alienate all the players that influenced the Sydney underworld. It was not a recipe for longevity. But the truth was, even when he was just a cocky youngster, he'd lived by the rule ‘live fast, die young'. Which is exactly what he did.

FLANNERY might have been half crazy but he was no fool. There had already been one attempt on his life and he knew it would not be the last. His sister-in-law described him as being jumpy – ‘a caged animal that could not relax'. In the end his catlike reflexes would not be enough. He was about to run out of his nine lives.

He abandoned his family house and kept moving between hostels, hotels and private homes. He would also wear disguises and change cars every few days and always carried a loaded gun. As the pressure grew, he took to leaving the safety catch off and the gun cocked. It was risky but better than giving an enemy any advantage in a shoot out. He knew half a second could make all the difference in a showdown.

But eventually he became sick of packing his bags, and in April 1985 rented an apartment under an assumed name in the prestigious 30-storey Connaught Building, conveniently across the road from the Criminal Investigation Branch. Perhaps he thought being nestled next to the police would give him extra protection.

If so, he was horribly wrong.

He leased the apartment at $350 a week for three months under Kath's brother-in-law's name of Mougalis.

It is almost certain that key members of the underworld and corrupt police had a council of war and decided that Flannery had run out of time. But the hit man would be hard to trap. He was cunning, dangerous and frightened. He kept his address secret and stopped being seen in public. He was short of money because he could no longer act as Freeman's bodyguard.

At one stage Freeman even suggested he should disappear. ‘Go away for a while and things will be taken care of.' He chose to ignore the advice.

As is usual in the underworld, it would be left to a ‘mate' to set up the target and this time the friend was Freeman himself.

On 8 May Flannery agreed to meet members of the murder taskforce informally to talk about the Eustace murder. He denied any knowledge of the case and said his mate had not turned up for the second meeting that was supposed to go ahead at the Airport Hilton.

But what if Flannery had been seen meeting the detectives? Flannery was frightened, so perhaps some were concerned he was trying to broker a deal with the police that would involve implicating Freeman.

On the very same day he met the murder taskforce detectives, his pager went off with a message – ‘Ring Mercedes' – Freeman's code name. Flannery did what he was told and Freeman organised a meeting for next morning.