Killing Time (6 page)

Don't forget the other matters that are hushed up as well and which appear all the worse for the cover-up once they are inevitably exposed. One example is the asthmatic who died after pushing the panic button at Port Phillip Prison – and, as per usual, the panic button didn't work. The asthmatic's name was Ian Thomas Campbell Westcott. Westcott was a 55-year-old white-collar criminal who was on remand (that is, he was refused bail before his trial) and had not yet even been convicted, so the presumption of innocence was still in his favour. Westcott had an asthma attack after lockdown one night and was suffering for so long that he was able to write and leave a note to the effect that he had died as a result of not being able to get any help in the middle of the night because nobody answered his call. The note was reported as saying: “asthma attack, buzzed for help, no response”. This ended up before the Coroner, and Port Phillip Prison was accused of a gross dereliction of responsibility.

What an outrage! Here is a bloke, who (by the way) has not even been convicted, dying because of another stuff-up. (Not that a conviction would make any life less valuable.) Why no buzzer? Negligence? Refusal to pay for repairs? Or not caring? Take your pick – it has to be one or all three of these. I suspect all three. This episode also explains why Camilleri was never charged after he attacked another prisoner with a pitchfork. Not caught on camera, as I had been told by one of the screws – probably because the camera wasn't working. Where is the accountability?

Toby Fraser's appeal was refused and he was ordered to serve his total sentence. Significantly, all the time I was with Toby I did not see him receive a skerrick of counselling, a scrap of education, or anything at all that could be remotely construed as beneficial to him or society.

Toby was subsequently released and I heard nothing further from him until I myself was released early in return for agreeing to become a Crown witness against Peter Dupas. Toby somehow found my mother's telephone number, rang her and threatened her that he was going to come around and bash her because I was giving evidence against his mate, Peter Dupas. My mother is the quintessential middle-class mum who has never been exposed to people like Toby. You can imagine the impact this effort had on a woman of mum's age and background! Profound, to say the least.

The Homicide Squad were advised and immediately became involved but Toby couldn't be found. Bearing in mind his previous behaviour, it seemed that these threats were all hot air as Toby had no ticker and would never act on the threats – or at least that's what we thought at the time.

I subsequently gave evidence against Dupas and never heard a word of Toby Fraser again until December 2007 when I picked up the newspaper and nearly fell off the chair. A man called Toby Fraser – from the photo, clearly one and the same Toby that I was in with – had been jailed in the Supreme Court of Western Australia for bludgeoning a 44-year-old man on the beach near Exmouth in northern Western Australia in October 2006. According to this chronology, not long after I was released and not long after Toby had made the phone call to my mother, he was murdering somebody in cold blood. The chilling aspect of this murder was that, after Toby had bludgeoned the victim, he strangled him with a piece of rope while he was still semi-conscious and sang to his victim a song by a band called Slayer which used the line “Look into my eyes while you die.”

Toby was later found to own a DVD of the violent Hollywood film
Natural Born Killers
. As in that movie, there was no rational reason for murder, and there was no clear motive for Toby to have murdered this man, who had in fact befriended him by picking him up as a hitchhiker.

Toby had already been on a crime spree in Western Australia after leaving Victoria. After the beach murder, Toby and his girlfriend stole the deceased's credit card and seven cans of beer from his car and chucked his body into the sea. The two later bought chicken parmigiana and a bottle of bourbon for dinner, then paid for a motel room, all with the deceased's credit card. Not the smartest thing to do if you want to avoid apprehension. Toby said when the police arrested him that he had been drinking heavily before the murder and had also been using testosterone, a steroid and a male growth hormone. This is rather interesting because Toby was tall and very weedy, and, as I said, had been stood over regularly. My bet is that he was taking the testosterone in a vain attempt to try and bulk up to avoid any further problems.

Toby was sentenced to twenty-seven years in prison and his girlfriend received four years and eight months for being an accessory to the murder. The thing that staggers me is the rapid progression of somebody like Toby from being just a dishonest, conniving pest, as I described him at the start of this chapter, to being a cold, callous, calculating killer. Knowing Toby Fraser as I do, I am unable to comprehend how he could stare into the eyes of a fellow human being while quietly strangling them, singing them a song and, with the other hand, pretending he was calling an ambulance. It is probably better that somebody like Toby will not see the light of day again, because if he continues as he had in prison when I was with him, he will not see out his sentence – he will be killed in jail.

There was one episode in jail that has never ceased to amuse me. It was the talk of the entire prison system once the cat was out of the bag.

There is a unit at Port Phillip which is also a quasi protection unit called Marlborough, which is for the mentally infirm. Once again I emphasise that Marlborough inmates are precisely the people who should not be in jail; rather, they should be in secure mental health facilities. Of course, nobody will bother to address this issue.

It is generally accepted that all the blokes in Marlborough have a few roos loose in the top paddock and therefore would not be able to cope in the general prison population. The most popular Marlborough prisoner was an African who was in jail for having sex with domestic cats – yes, cats! He was silly enough to tell someone else this story and of course the story raced around the jail like a bushfire! Every time he would be escorted around the jail or have a visit with his parents there would be cat calls (forgive the pun) of “Here puss, puss” or blokes making meowing noises. While I felt sorry for the bloke, it was very funny in an environment where there was not a lot of levity.

One poor Marlborough prisoner was the subject of a supposed prank by four prison officers. The so-called prank came about when the officers concerned told the prisoner that it was his turn to leave the jail with the screws to get the doughnuts for the unit that week. To show you how gullible this young man was, no doughnuts are brought in from the outside, ever, for any prisoner. That clearly didn't cross his mind, and he didn't have the mental capacity to intellectualise the fact that there were no doughnuts, ever. He fell for it and was very excited at the prospect of going outside the prison to buy a treat for the unit.

The officers told the prisoner that, before he could go out, however, he had to participate in a security drill, which involved him inserting up his bum a sausage from the kitchen wrapped in a bit of glad wrap. He would then see if he could get through the security at the front door to go outside the jail and purchase the doughnuts without the staff at the front gate discovering the “contraband”. What followed was that the prisoner stuck the sausage into his anus and went with the officers to the front gate, where he was immediately strip searched. As happens in a strip search, once you are naked you are ordered to turn around and bend over and part your cheeks (about as demeaning as it gets) – “smile for the Governor”, as it's called – and lo and behold there was the end of the sausage sticking out of this kid's bottom.

Apparently this preying on a gullible young person by precisely those employed to protect him was a source of great hilarity. A photograph was taken of the sausage in situ and the young man was allegedly threatened with being charged with trying to remove an item from the jail. Needless to say, as he had failed the bogus security drill, there were no doughnuts for little Johnny and he was sent back to his unit. All the screws thought this was a huge joke and this story got around the jail very quickly.

This would not have gone any further had the young fellow not casually mentioned to his parents on his next visit that he had failed a security drill during the week and hadn't got any doughnuts. Once the parents heard this all hell broke loose and the senior supervising officer involved, Mr (he always insisted on being addressed as “Mr”) Trevor Spearman, endeavoured to cover up the whole incident on behalf of the other three officers. (By the way, I was always taught that respect is something that is earned, not demanded. So much for MR Spearman!) All four officers concerned were stood down and there was an investigation.

The wash-up of this so-called “Sausagegate” was that the young man has now, I understand, received a substantial payout by the prison and the officers were all sacked. Can anybody therefore explain to me how, when I was at Melbourne Airport recently, I spotted Trevor Spearman checking hand luggage and clothing at the departure gate? Believe it or not, Mr Spearman is still working in the security industry, actually X-raying your luggage, coats, shoes, etc. before you board a plane to depart Melbourne. How does Trevor (Mr no more!) have a job in the security industry after being dismissed for being prepared to cover up the incident? I suppose it's because there are very few sausages exported from the passenger terminal at Melbourne Airport!

What amazes me more is the fact that this young man was taken from his unit without any proper paperwork. He was taken to the front door of the jail without any paperwork at all, and was then submitted to this unnecessary humiliation by officers, all supposedly in the name of a bit of fun. The preying on the weak by an officer who is trained to know better is inexcusable.

I noted with interest that one of the other officers dismissed over “Sausagegate” was an officer by the name of Russell Davies. Mr Davies had an unpleasant disposition and clearly didn't like his job at all. One evening I had finished a visit with my family, and I was coming back out to the strip room where you are taken out of the monkey suit that you wear on a visit and then strip searched. The monkey suit is a one-piece garment with a zip up the back with a cable tie placed around the top of the zip, the theory being to stop you secreting any contraband around your person. It clearly doesn't work because the entire jail is riddled with drugs. However, the procedure is that you come out from your visit, you take your key off the key ring board, unlock your locker and take your clothes into the strip room where you are strip searched. After the strip search you head back to your unit.

I followed this usual procedure and Mr Davies, without warning, started screaming abuse, venting a tirade of fuck this and fuck that upon me. It was all to do with me taking the key off the key rack. I was absolutely dumbfounded at his attitude, and I told him in no uncertain terms. A hush descended over the entire strip room because not many prisoners spoke back to the officers. There were three other officers on duty there and they all said nothing. The crooks thought there might be some fun and games as a consequence, so they all stuck their heads around the corner into the strip room to see what was going on.

Davies screamed at me that the procedure wasn't to (fucking this and fucking that) take the keys off the key rack, but rather for the officer to do it. Talk about a storm in a tea cup. I had been in jail about two years by this time and that was the first occasion on which this alleged procedure had ever been outlined to me. I was merely following the practice that I'd been following whenever I had received a visit. Nevertheless, Davies continued to scream abuse and berate me, becoming so red in the face that I thought he was going to blow a valve. I just stood there.

I made every attempt I could not to infuriate the screws for obvious reasons, and this bloke's berating out of the blue really shocked me.

We subsequently went into the strip room and he conducted the strip search. As I was leaving I said to him: “I want you to remember one thing. One day my sentence will be over. I will go home and I will work hard to make a success of myself once again. In the meantime you will still be here looking up blokes' arses in the strip room!” I did not know at that time how prescient my comments were but after Sausagegate it became clear that Mr Davies had gone one step further than just
looking
up blokes' arses!

The next day I was on my run when Davies appeared in the compound where I was running and walked over. He said he wanted to talk to me about what had happened last night. I said to him “Is this official business?” He said “No.” I said, “Don't talk to me ever again unless it's on official business” and I kept running. I looked back as I was running around and he was still standing there clearly nonplussed by my reply.

If you stick to your guns and let them know that you are not prepared to be walked over, or stood over, then by and large the officers are essentially gutless bullies and only prey on the weak.

While on the subject of officers, the other aspect that is perennially kept quiet is the issue of trafficking of contraband by officers to prisoners. It is not just drugs, it is general contraband. Pornography can be purchased, even alcohol can be purchased. While I was at Fulham, a medium and minimum security prison, you were at some stages able to buy for $100 a bottle of Johnny Walker Red Label Scotch whisky, which at that time had a retail of less than $20. Some blokes were that desperate for a drink that they paid their $100, particularly around New Year's eve.