Crime Time: Australians Behaving Badly (10 page)

JOHN STUART AND JAMES FINCH

FIREBOMBERS

W
hen John Stuart, a Brisbane criminal, decided to firebomb the Whiskey Au Go Go nightclub in 1973, he sent all the way to England for help. James Finch had been in prison with him, serving a fourteen-year sentence before being deported back to Britain.

The Whiskey Au Go Go was one of forty nightclubs in Brisbane in the 1970s. Nightclubs were easy places to threaten in those days. They were crowded. It would be hard to get out if there was an emergency.

Due to poor planning, the windows were sealed, replaced with air conditioners. Some of the exit doors were locked. The carpets had rubber underlay, so that when they burned, they would release poisonous carbon monoxide gas.

Extortion gangs in Brisbane threatened to firebomb nightclubs if they weren’t paid regular ‘protection’ money. The Whiskey Au Go Go management refused. Firebombing this place would be a warning to the others. The gang standing over the Whiskey paid Stuart to organise an attack.

Stuart made his plans carefully. Finch and a man called Hamilton would do the job. They had black balaclavas and petrol drums. There was another man to drive the getaway car.

As a criminal known to police, Stuart might be suspected, so he took care to cover his tracks. He contacted Brian Bolton, a journalist he knew. Two Sydney men, he said, were planning to firebomb a nightclub, he wasn’t sure when or where. He suggested that Bolton should go around the nightclubs with him and warn the owners.

On 7 March, 100 people enjoyed live music played by two bands, the Delltones and Trinity. At 2 a.m., Finch and Hamilton leapt from their stolen car. Finch held two petrol drums and Hamilton took off the cap. They threw the drums inside the door, where the petrol spilled on to the floor, and threw in a match.

With a whoosh, the fire began. It roared up the stairs and the air conditioning system spread poisonous carbon monoxide fumes through the air.

People screamed and scrambled over each other to get out. Some managed to break the windows and leap out on to the footpath, five metres below. But fifteen people died, ten men and five women.

Stuart left a note for Bolton at his newspaper, saying he’d been waiting for him from 8.55 till 10.40 p.m. – where had Bolton been?

Despite all the covering of tracks, police arrested Stuart and Finch on 12 March, less than a week after the firebombing. Hamilton was missing, probably dead.

To get the charges going quickly, police charged Finch and Stuart with one murder, of a woman called Jennifer Davie.

Stuart and Finch pleaded not guilty. They swallowed wire crosses, as a protest. Being in hospital didn’t stop them being tried and convicted.

They appealed. They complained that they had been unfairly treated, that there had been too much publicity, making it impossible to get a fair trial. In November 1977, Stuart climbed on to the roof of his jail and used bricks and guttering to write a message: ‘Innocent – victim of police verbal’. He even wrote poetry. None of it helped.

In 1979, a heart infection killed him in his cell.

Finch spent his time in prison protesting his innocence. He wrote letters. Journalists supported him. There were even groups who were trying to get him released. There were claims that the confessions had been made up by police and weren’t genuine. For years after the event, the men’s guilt was questioned.

One of Finch’s supporters, Cheryl Cole, actually married him.

Eventually, he was released and deported to Britain, leaving his wife behind. She did travel to England for a few months, but he treated her badly. She returned home.

Thinking he was safe, Finch admitted to a journalist that he and the others charged were guilty of the firebombing after all. When the Queensland government pointed out that he’d only been convicted of one murder and could be brought back to stand trial for the others, he backtracked, saying he’d been confused.

Whoops!

DID YOU KNOW…?

The 1970s were a good time for shoplifters in England. In fact, a group of Australian criminals, the Kangaroo Gang, travelled to the UK especially to shoplift. They worked in teams, usually sending in one member to cause trouble while the rest of them helped themselves to the goods. This wasn’t a case of pinching a bag of sweets from a supermarket or a pair of jeans from a clothes shop either. One team actually stole a chimpanzee from the Harrods Zoo in London!

ROBERT TRIMBOLE

O
n 15 July 1977, furniture store owner Donald Mackay disappeared from the car park of a pub in the New South Wales town of Griffith. He was never seen again. At midnight, police found his blood-spattered white van and some spent cartridges in the car park.

Donald wasn’t just a shopkeeper. He had worked hard to try to stop people in the area from growing and selling the drug marijuana. The first time he told police about it, the farmers just paid small fines. Then, in 1975, Donald found out about a much bigger crop being grown at a nearby place called Coleambally. Most of the growers and sellers went to jail. Donald had succeeded, but this incident ended up killing him. Defence lawyers saw a list of people who had reported their clients to the police. Now they knew their enemy.

Robert Trimbole also lived in Griffith. At first, he worked honestly as a panel beater, then with another man, fixing pinball machines. In 1972, he bought a restaurant, the Texas Tavern.

But by 1975, he didn’t need the Texas Tavern any more and sold it. Robert was rich from selling marijuana. He owned many properties.

The men who had been fined during the first drug raid were related by marriage to his business partner, Giuseppe Sergi. Giuseppe’s brother-in-law, Francesco Sergi, was one of the men caught in the big raid.

Donald Mackay had to go.

Robert Trimbole went to Melbourne, where he had a chat with another business partner, Gianfranco Tizzoni. Tizzoni knew someone who could organise a hit man.

The hit man, Jim Bazley, agreed to do the job for $10,000. He rang Donald from the town of Jerilderie, 160 kilometres from Griffith, saying he wanted to buy a houseful of furniture. Donald was busy that day. He sent a salesman, Harold Pursehouse, to meet him at the Flag Inn, Jerilderie. After waiting in his car for two hours, Harold left, but said later that he’d seen a man watching him.

Three days later, Donald disappeared. Robert made sure he had an alibi. He was in a Sydney restaurant at the time.

Donald was dead, though nobody could find his body, but the marijuana industry in the area was finished. Trimbole and the other marijuana dealers started to sell heroin instead. It paid better anyway.

In 1979, a drug boss called Terry Clark asked Robert to arrange for the deaths of two drug couriers, Douglas and Isabel Wilson, who had been talking to the police. Again, Jim Bazley got the job and killed the couple, but he messed it up. Their bodies were found only a month later. He hadn’t parked their car at Melbourne Airport as he was supposed to, and Tizzoni and Trimbole did this instead. Trimbole told Tizzoni to get rid of their car keys and speeding ticket. Tizzoni threw them into a stormwater drain.

Police caught Bazley in Sydney when he was driving a stolen car. He received a nine-year sentence for armed robbery, which ended up as a life sentence. Tizzoni was caught with a car boot full of marijuana. Terrified, he told police a lot of things they needed to know. He showed them the stormwater drain, where the keys had fallen on a ledge.

Robert Trimbole escaped from Australia in 1981, on a false passport. In London, he was arranging weapons for the IRA, an Irish terrorist organisation. He went to Ireland under the name of Michael Hanbury. There, in 1985, the Irish police arrested him for a small crime. Unfortunately, Australia and Ireland didn’t have any arrangements by which he could have been sent home to face trial. He had to be released.

Robert wasn’t taking any chances. He left Ireland for Spain that night. But while he never went to jail for his crimes, he didn’t live much longer. In 1987, he died of a heart attack.

DID YOU KNOW…?

Just before Christmas 1967, Prime Minister Harold Holt went for a swim at Victoria’s Cheviot Beach and disappeared, never to be seen again. Most people believe that he simply drowned. He was a strong swimmer, but he wasn’t young, he had a bad shoulder and the sea was very rough. None of these facts have prevented conspiracy theories from springing up. One theory is that the CIA murdered him because he was planning to take Australia’s troops out of Vietnam. Another theory says he was a Chinese spy and that a submarine took him to China. There was even a story that he ran off to France with a girlfriend and had been sneaking in and out of Australia till his death in the 1980s. A swimming pool in Melbourne has been named after him.

JAMES MILLER

THE KILLER WHO DIDN’T – THE TRURO MURDERS

J
ames Miller is in South Australia’s Yatala Prison, for the murders of six women he didn’t actually kill. The man who did kill them died long ago.

James was like a weak boy who hangs out with a bully, watching him bash people up and then complains, ‘I wasn’t doing nothing!’ when the teacher punishes him.

In the early 1970s, James Miller, a small-time crook, was in prison. One of his fellow prisoners was a cheerful, good-looking boy called Chris Worrell. James, who was gay, found himself falling in love. He was surprised to find out that Chris was in jail for rape, but didn’t worry about it.

When both of them were free, they continued their friendship. James was in love, but knew that Worrell would never return his feelings. In fact, what Worrell liked best was to drive around Adelaide, picking up girls. James wasn’t jealous. He even drove the car. He would drive them somewhere quiet and go for a walk while Chris was with the girl he’d picked up that night.

One evening, they picked up a young woman called Veronica Knight. When James returned from his walk, she was dead. James was shocked, but helped to bury her.

If he had reported this murder, six other women would have lived and he wouldn’t have gone to prison. But his love and weakness won. He continued to drive Chris on his pickups – and continued to help him bury his victims.

In 1978, a man picking mushrooms in the Truro area found what was left of Veronica Knight. The police started to search the area and, over a year, found the remains of other girls who had gone missing between Christmas 1976 and February 1977: Sylvia Pittman, Vicki Howell, Connie Iordanides, Julie Mykyta, Tania Kenny and the last, Deborah Lamb, who had probably been still alive when Worrell buried her.

The disappearances had stopped some time ago, so the detectives decided that the murderer was probably in jail.

He wasn’t in jail. He was dead. Not long after the murder of Deborah Lamb, Chris, James and a friend called Debbie went away for the weekend. Chris was in a bad mood and insisted on driving, even though he was drunk. The car crashed. Only James survived.

Chris Worrell had had a girlfriend, Amelia, who knew nothing about what he’d been doing. She was very sad about his death. One day, James made the mistake of telling her the truth about Chris.

However Amelia felt about this, she promised not to tell anyone. After all, Chris was dead and James hadn’t actually killed anyone. What was the point?

But the bodies began to turn up. Then there was a reward of $30,000 offered for information. Whatever her reason for telling, Amelia finally told the police, who took James to the station for questioning.

At first, he denied everything, but eventually, he admitted to having been with Chris during the murders. He offered to show the police where the bodies had been buried.

In February 1980, three years after the last murder, James Miller went on trial. He argued that he was innocent because he hadn’t actually killed the victims. He said he hadn’t realised what was going to happen. These arguments didn’t help him. He was acquitted of the murder of Veronica Knight, because he couldn’t have known that would happen. As far as the judge was concerned, however, anyone who’d hang around while people were being killed, not once but six times, was as guilty as if he had killed them himself.

Miller went back to jail, this time for life, though a few years later he managed to get a minimum sentence. This means he will eventually be released, though not till he is 74 years old. He has spent his time in prison complaining, going on hunger strikes and even writing a book about his innocence. What he has never done publicly is say he is sorry.

DID YOU KNOW…?

In 2008, Mark ‘Chopper’ Read was told he had only a few years to live, unless he had a life-saving liver transplant. Read refused because he felt that he didn’t deserve it and that a liver transplant would be better given to some innocent child than to himself. After the story appeared in the newspapers, there was a flood of letters from readers, offering support, money, even transplant organs. Australians love an honest bad guy.