Enforcer (30 page)

But around five o’clock the next morning, 18 February 1986, Donna and I were lying on a double mattress on the lounge room floor – because it was cooler in there than in the bedroom – when we heard a dirty great banging on the front door. She thought it was the Comos. I looked out the window and saw coppers everywhere, shotguns, flak jackets, navy blue jumpsuits.

The pounding on the door continued as they tried to batter it down. But the door at the front of the house had been put on backwards, so they were actually bashing the door where the hinges were. They were really struggling.
Bang bang bang
. It gave me time to get into my trackies and put on a singlet while Donna went and got the kids. I was waiting in the lounge room for them when they burst in. The first one came running at me with a shotgun like he was going to hit me in the head with it. I still couldn’t use my right arm but let him have one with the left and dropped him.

Maybe I should have gone peacefully, but that’s just me. If someone comes running at me, I just go off. If they’d knocked on the door and said, ‘Are you Colin Caesar Campbell?’ I would have just said, ‘Yeah.’ But not now.

Bang
. I dropped another one, then kicked another in the ribs. I put down about six or seven of them before one copper yelled out, ‘If you don’t stop there could be an accident.’ I looked over and here was this copper with a shotgun pointed at my young bloke Daniel’s head. ‘If you don’t calm down this gun could go off.’ And then another copper stepped up and pointed one at Donna.

‘Yeah, all right,’ I said. ‘Youse have got me.’

The lounge room was filling up with coppers and then four Ds came in.

‘You’re Colin Caesar Campbell?’ the head detective said.

‘Yeah.’

‘Can you step over here?’

I remained on guard but stepped over to the corner of the lounge room with him, and he spoke calmly.

‘If you quieten down and cooperate with us, I’ll guarantee you that nothing will happen to your wife or kids. They won’t be charged.

‘I’m not making any statements.’

‘Well, we’ll talk about that later.’ So two coppers came over and tried handcuffing me but my right arm wouldn’t go round my back. I kept telling them I couldn’t move it. The detective said, ‘Don’t put his hands behind his back. Handcuff them in front.’

He was being extra nice.

‘Will you let my wife make one phone call?’ I asked.

‘No.’

Some of the coppers went to go out the back door. I tried to stop them. ‘Don’t go out there. The dog’ll eat ya.’

They went out anyway and Buck was straight into them. He latched onto one copper’s leg and once a bull terrier latches on, that’s it. The way Donna told it to me was that Buck knocked this copper over and swung himself around so that the bulk of the dog’s body was on top of the copper. The other five officers out there couldn’t shoot him because they’d most likely hit their mate. So they just laid into him with the butts of their shotguns. Donna eventually got him off and let him out the back gate so there wouldn’t be any more trouble. I used to take him for a walk every afternoon up to Pancho’s place so he ran straight there. Pancho saw the blood dripping off him and knew something was wrong, so he flew down to our place.

By the time he got there I’d been taken away.

T
HE
D
S
took me into the cop shop and were nice as pie. They offered me sandwiches and a soft drink and were all chatty. They wanted to know what had happened on the day of the ambush. I told them I wasn’t saying or signing anything. They had me there for about eight or nine hours when a D walked in and said, ‘Your mate’s downstairs. He says he’s not leaving till he sees ya.’

So they let Pancho up to see me and Donna was with him. She gave me a big hug and Pancho asked how I was going.

‘As good as can be expected.’

‘Are they belting ya?’

‘Not so far.’

The cops let Donna give me my medication then ushered her and Pancho out.

‘Well, if you’re not going to sign anything,’ they said, ‘you’re going down to the cells.’

Four uniformed coppers came and took me down into the bowels of the building. They walked me into a cell and handcuffed me to the bars at the front. Two of them grabbed hold of one leg each while the other two came up close to my body.
Whump
. The first guy hit me once. Then
whump
, the second one had a go. They started taking turns, whacking me in the back, in the side of the head, up under the arm. My right arm was killing me but they were only young blokes and I wasn’t going to give in to them.

‘My grandmother can hit harder than you,’ I said. That didn’t go down too well and I thought to myself, Why don’t you keep your big mouth shut?

Then the two that were holding my legs said they wanted their go at the big bad bikie. So they swapped over and the fresh pair started using me as their punching bag.

I kept egging them on so they kept laying in. I didn’t know how much more I could take, but then an older woman walked into the cell. She must have been approaching sixty, looked like a secretary, but at the sight of her these young coppers sprang to attention.

‘What do you think you’re up to?’ she snapped, looking me over and seeing blood on my head. ‘The four of you out of this cell. If I see any of you with this man again you’ll all be up at Geraldton by the next morning.’ I didn’t have a clue where Geraldton was but she made it sound like a pretty bad place to be.

She grabbed two sergeants – one male, one female – and said, ‘I’m going to leave this gentleman in your care. If he gets even one more scratch on him, you two will be going to Geraldton.’

Everything was sweet after that. The female sergeant would bring me Hungry Jack’s burgers and thick shakes, the whole bit. The Ds kept being nice to me. They’d bring me up from the cells each day for about an hour and a half and put me in a room upstairs. They let Donna and the kids in. This head detective kept saying to me, ‘See how good coppers are? We’re not as bad as people think.’

‘Oh yeah, what about the beating I copped down in the cells?’ I said to him.

‘Oh, I heard about that. They were only young fellas, new to the force.’

There was another D playing bad cop and he said to me one time, ‘You better cooperate or else you know what we can do to you.’

‘Youse have already done it,’ I said.

I spent about five days in the cells waiting for two Ds from New South Wales to rock up. Then I was put before the court and charged with one count of murder – that of my own brother, Shadow. I was gutted. You couldn’t hurt me any more. Apparently the coppers had decided that the way they were going to lock all of us up for a very long time was to make a case that we had a common purpose: that we were basically all co-conspirators to the events in the car park that day and that, therefore, we were all responsible for all seven deaths. So they were charging everyone who was there with all seven murders, but for the extradition they kept it simple and only used one. They could have chosen any of the deaths to hit me with but they were obviously trying to get some sort of a reaction out of me by charging me with killing Shadow.

The hearing was just a formality and I didn’t fight it. But then none of the airlines wanted to take me. There were stories in the Perth papers about how the airlines were afraid of retaliation from my brothers. I asked one of the coppers what the problem was.

‘They’ve all read the papers about how Caesar Campbell was the standover man for the Bandidos,’ he said. ‘And how you had a secret graveyard in the Snowy Mountains where you’ve been burying bodies for over twenty years.’

‘What a load of shit,’ I said. ‘It’s only been fifteen years.’

I
T LOOKED
like I was going to be returning by train, but then at the last minute one of the airlines agreed to fly me. It was quite a relief because I didn’t want to have to spend three days handcuffed to a copper.

I was allowed to change into my own clothes. So I was dressed in the usual black jeans, black boots, shirt, bandana and sunnies. I was put in an unmarked van full of cops and taken to the airport. The head of airport security wanted to meet me, so I had to go through that. Then they walked me out through a big hangar. We stopped about every thirty feet until someone said, ‘Clear’, then we’d go the next thirty feet. This went all the way from the hangar to the back of the plane where there were about twenty coppers standing with guns. I was led up the stairway at the back of the plane, then plonked into the middle of the very back row of seats. I had one detective handcuffed to my right hand and one to my left. This was going to be a great flight.

They let the other passengers on and we hadn’t been in the air long when one of the Ds turned to me and said they had an offer to make me. ‘If you help us out, we can give you a grand a week and relocation to anywhere in the world – with a new identity.’

‘No way, shove it up your arses,’ I said.

‘How about a hundred thousand dollars up front, a thousand a week and the relocation?’

‘I’m not talking to you.’

‘You know Bernie’s already rolled over on you.’

‘Yeah, I know what the cunt’s done.’

‘Well he’s only getting fifty thousand, and five hundred a week. We’re offering you double.’

‘You can offer me a million dollars, I’m not turning on anyone in me club. I started the club. I can’t wait to be back with me brothers. What you coppers and straights don’t understand about outlaw clubs is that we live for the brotherhood. We live for the loyalty and honour of being there for each other no matter what. There is not a thing you can offer me, nothing you can do to me. I was the first to wear Bandido colours in Australia and you will never know what that means or feels like.’

They ordered something to eat but didn’t get me anything, mongrels. I was starving.

With the handcuffs on, my hands had to move with their hands as they ate. So every time they lifted up the hand that I was cuffed to, I happened to have to sneeze or scratch my ear; I’d jerk my hand and food would go everywhere so that both of them ended up with spills over their shirts and on their trousers. They gave the meals back half-eaten.

They kept on at me about the deal. Said I could go anywhere in Australia or to England, Canada, New Zealand. A thousand dollars a week was a lot of money back then. They said they might even be able to get me a fair sum more up front and in the bank.

‘There’s no way I’m gunna do what that cocksucker Bernie did. I’m not giving up me brothers.’

If I’d been asked who I thought would have ratted on the club, I wouldn’t have picked Bernie. I thought he’d stay staunch. But, like I’ve said to other blokes, I can kind of understand where he was coming from.

The cops had Bernie for ten days and they moved him from cop shop to cop shop so no solicitor could get near him. And his missus, Caroline, hated the club. She was a real north shore tennis type and they’d just had a son. Apparently she threatened Bernie that it was either the club or her and the son. I know I’d tell them to punch it. But after ten days of being pounded and having your missus coming in and telling you it’s your son or the club, I can see the pressure he was under. At least I know Donna would never put me in that situation. Even so, I could never have ratted on the club. Every morning you’ve got to get up and look at yourself in the mirror.

A
S WE
approached Sydney Airport, the jacks said, ‘When we land, just sit here and don’t move. We’re going to be last off the plane. Be as inconspicuous as you can.’

The plane landed, the door at the front opened. I don’t think a single person had got off before a great herd of Tactical Response Group coppers came running down the aisle with shotguns.

I turned to the two Ds. ‘This is being inconspicuous, is it?’

We went out through the back of the plane. There were probably twenty-five coppers on the tarmac, vans everywhere, carloads of Ds. I was bundled into a van and taken to Waverley Court and put in a cell, still in handcuffs. A copper from the Homicide Squad came up to me and said, ‘I’m going to offer you the deal one more time – a new house, a thousand dollars a week.’

I told him to stick it up his arse so he gave me a few thumps. I told him he hit like a girl. I always had to have the last word. He took a few more swings until one of the coppers outside yelled, ‘They want him up in court.’

I was taken up to the courtroom. It was just a formality and the magistrate remanded me to Parklea prison. Then back downstairs and into the van. I could see the TRG blokes getting into a van in front and others getting into a van behind. A trail of police cars joined in.

My mind was running through what it might be like in jail. I’d never been in one before. I’d only had that one charge from when Irene’s boyfriend fell off the roof.

I wondered what the guards would be like. I’d heard all the stories. But I figured they’d probably be like cops: there’d be some bad ones and some good ones. Well, what can they do? I thought to myself. Give me a thumping? You’ve had plenty of people try that before. I figured I’d let them know that if they tried to thump me they were going to cop it back in spades. I’d also tell them: ‘You be fair with me and I’ll be fair with you.’