I’m not fleeing or going interstate even though I know the police have me as a suspect for the robbery, because I can’t abandon my daughter.
Freefalling, I hit the pipe hard, taking the edge off the ice with pot: sharpening up from pot with ice. More and more drugs, more and more drugs. Everything hurts so fucking much.
Life isn’t going to last much longer – I know it. There’s no future for me but death.
69. MEYHEM 666
Coked to the fucking gills, I’m high-wiring it at a fight night at Melbourne Pavilion with Will Tomlinson defending his super featherweight title against Mexican Daniel Ruiz.
Jay Malkoun is also here – that gentleman I went to the Spearmint Rhino to catch up with.
Now he’s the fucking Comancheros’ president. Can you believe this shit?
And there he is fucking sitting ringside with Mick Gatto and a pack of other fucking underworldly associates, and of course no shortage of bikies.
Fuck him, ya know, and his pack of killers. Gonna go have a bit of a word to him.
*
Well that didn’t go so well. Outta here.
Odd, hey, how not long after I leave, the venue’s fucking power fails – and during the title fight. With no lights, the fight’s over, night’s over – bad luck, huh.
Cunts.
*
20 MAY 2012
Two nights later plain-clothes police are out cruising north-west Melbourne as part of Operation Mono, a crackdown on motorcycle thieves, when they spot a pair of motorbikes side by side at a red light in Pascoe Vale South. The police report that a bike with a solo male rider has stolen plates, while the other, sporting a man on the handlebars and a woman riding pillion, has plates starting with MEY – black masking tape covering the rest.
When the light turns green the police follow the bikes for a short distance before hitting the lights and sirens. Both riders glance back but instead of stopping they peel off a roundabout in opposite directions, one to the right the other to the left. The police turn after the rider with stolen plates who then really opens up some speed and shifts to the wrong side of the road, prompting the police to let him get away in line with orders not to pursue motorcycles. It’s about 8 pm.
A bit over an hour and a half later, another plain-clothes unit with Operation Mono drives through Niddrie and approaches La Porchetta, the Italian restaurant on Keilor Road where the restaurant chain’s founder, Rocco Pantaleo, once shot a man dead in self defence. In touch with their comrades who earlier got left for dust, the police see a Honda CBR1000 Fireblade parked outside and decide to take a closer look.
Moving the black tape out of the way, they find the rego reads MEYHEM, with the black tin plate beneath displaying 666. The other team is soon on the scene.
*
CHRIS:
Everything’s tense. Very fucking tense with Gavin’s crew stalking, hunting, looking to slice and murder, rape and bleed. Coppers are positioning: last time they got me for spitting the dummy with that fucking puppy-killer ranger, but any day they’ll connect a-fucking-nother dot to the Laverton job, and then it’ll be open season for the SOG to shoot me on the spot. And now fucking Jay Malkoun can unleash his bikie hordes on me. It’s not fucking easy flying solo sometimes.
After giving the slip to some clown-arse coppers who hit the lights and sirens when I was riding, I stop in at La Porchetta. But soon there’s a male acting suspiciously near my motorbike. The guy’s wearing a fucking hoodie; now it looks like a few more, a group of ’em, one with disposable blue gloves. What the fuck? Comancheros up to no good? This is fucking serious.
Here they come. Outta here.
One fella grabs me! I drop my helmet reaching for my weapon. He’s dropped something reaching for his. I’m faster. ‘Fuck off,’ I shout, showing him the business end. He pisses himself and fucking bolts! And it’s a radio he’s dropped – a police radio! The coppers are gonna fucking knock me for sure. Only minutes before there’s a total swarm. Betta fuckin’ run.
70. SONS OF GOD
21 MAY 2012: KEILOR EAST
Leaving behind his bike, CCTV footage and other evidence, Chris heads to Silvia’s house at Sterling Drive, Keilor East. She later tells police that he had gone out to dinner at La Porchetta with some mates, but she wouldn’t have a clue who they were because Chris, like most blokes, don’t tell their missuses ‘jack shit’ about boys’ nights out.
He came home without his motorbike, Silvia says, telling her that he’d had a bit of trouble at the restaurant – a problem with the police – but he doesn’t elaborate, she says.
By Silvia’s account, when she’s showering later (which would have been a little before dawn on Monday, going by the police timeline), Runty and her dog, Gucci, start barking right before a loudspeaker booms out with ‘Christopher Dean Binse, please go to the front door – go to the driveway.’
Having decided during the night to arrest BADNE$$, the police force has ringed the house with gunmen from his old foe, the Special Operations Group.
At about 6.30 am, before the sun has risen over Melbourne, a SOG armoured vehicle rolls up the driveway with a negotiator inside using a loudspeaker to tell Chris to surrender.
CHRIS:
No more man to man; here comes the beast: the bullet-proof storm-trooper battlewagon. They’re gonna obliterate me. No pretence of civilian policing anymore. They’ve come for the solja.
Sirens going, stopping at the front door; imminent assault; about to be shot; terrified; flashbacks of previous traumatic arrests; hospitalisation; bedside hearings.
Only boxers on, I go to jump the side fence and flee but there’s a SOG member fully exposed in the paddock; I could shoot him but I don’t, and now that I haven’t the initiative is his and the cordon will close in seconds.
Never going to get past them now, so I panic my way back inside. Finger on the table. Boot in the face. Where’s the money, fuckhead. Do you know James Edward Smith, fuckhead. About to die, fuckhead.
After blacking out all the windows, I grab a four-litre tin of olive oil and pour it around the rear and front doors and barricade them.
My life’s in danger. On with the bulletproof jacket. Don’t come anywhere near me, you goons. Take aim at the advancing threat. Gotta keep ’em at bay. I’m not interested in the demands you’re blaring from your loudspeaker.
‘Chris, leave the firearm inside the house. Come out the front door with nothing in your hands. Keep your hands where we can see them. You will be met by police; follow their instructions.’
Yeah? Fuck youse. Wanna play? Come and get me. No? Just gonna sit out there, are ya? Stop wasting my time.
*
The SOG reinforce the point with sirens and flashing lights but there is no response.
Not until about an hour later when Chris aims a revolver through a window and shoots the armoured vehicle. The bullet doesn’t penetrate, but after a couple such shots the police reverse out of the driveway and park on the road.
*
CHRIS:
Fuck off, ya dropkicks. Coming back to the sofa in the lounge room, I heat a pipe and watch the ice melt and become smoke, vapour, fucking Satanic mist. The shit drifts in the glass until I whip it into me and all the phones start ringing and the black killers are circling and the engines are revving and loudspeaker booming with my name, my name, Chris, Chris, Chris, what the fuck is a name, it’s all a game, and the crystal is boiling and I have a gun, a gun, a fucking .38, mate, ready to hand, ready to spin and see where it fucking lands; where it places me; classo for heaven or hell, it fucking makes no difference to me, to this, to what’s coming. Gotta get the message out or in, I’m filled with sin. There’s nothing to come after this. Why can’t I blow fucking every molecule of ice out of me into this pipe: kilos of the shit solidifying back into all the crystal bags with time folding back, reversing everything, man, getting me down from this emergency, this fucking ladder, this fucking escalator I’m on, that I’ve fucking always been on.
>
Gotta get down. I get down – down on the mattress with Silvia, who comforts me, and my boy Runty.
Runty, Runty, Runty – I love you, man. We understand each other. You know how this shit plays out. Twice you’ve seen them throw me on my face and cuff me and both times you’ve been pining and crying – even yourself getting locked away and put on death row – you know how it is for us. We’ve got something in common, you poor fuck.
But it won’t go down that way today. Fucking not today ’cos if they take me alive I’ll end up cemented forever: isolation forever; batshit insane in a tiny concrete room with them doing fucking every sick, twisted medical measure to keep me breathing so they can torture me for fucking years and years and years. So I’d rather die. I’m tired, though, too tired to run outside all-guns-blazing to get shot down in a blaze of glory. Blaze of bullshit.
The police keep blaring out their demands and instructions but I’m not interested. Anyway I’m tired. Lying here in the arms of my sheila – me dog by me side – I fall asleep.
The coppers do their best to engage me but Silvia’s mostly dealing with them while I sleep. I’m sleeping a lot during this siege – who would have thought you could do that? Not me. But now I know – this shit’s tiring – and if all the ice can’t keep me awake then they don’t have much chance. Who gives a fuck. All coming down anyway.
My only request of them, really, is a simple phone call to my daughter – a last dying wish to say goodbye; a last dying warning to her that I cannot save her from the evils around her: I want to tell her I just can’t save her. Can’t even protect her from the evil perils and dangers around her, from the criminal dynasty she was born into. I need to tell her that I am a failure of a father, because I can’t save her from the lies and deceit, or from the dangers lurking close at hand.
But the phone call’s not happening so I tuck secret notes into cosmetics scattered around the house. That might work.
Silvia is cooking but she can’t hold down food. Neither can I. We’re vomiting. It’s the fear. Fear of maiming, torture, death. She gives me hydrolytes. Still vomiting.
It’s night again. She keeps cowering in the shower with a doona over her. I keep bringing her back to the lounge room to cuddle and comfort her as she is extremely stressed by the ordeal too. Whenever I wake she’s back in the shower. Come back, baby.
Lightning strikes and we are rigid, screaming with terror, blind, ear drums poleaxed, the world ending – they’re shooting flash-bang grenades into the house. On fire? I don’t know. I can barely see. But I’m going to fire some shots as a fuck-youse, though.
I snap a pair of shots back and evict Silvia. Too dangerous now. I can’t run – nowhere to run to – nowhere, nothing to be – but she has to get out.
*
Just me and Runty now. Curled on the mattress with Runty, time going by: nothing but despair.
Better to be shot down in the field.
Honourable end for a solja.
Ya know, to blast them all to hell all I need do is leave the gas lines open in the house and then when they lob in more grenades, maybe the CS ones they’re sure to be readying, it will ignite. It would be bigger than Ned Kelly – wiping out the cream of Victoria’s SOG.
But I have no desire to kill or maim anyone, really.
I just want to disappear, to relocate – that’s all the robbery was for: to relocate my daughter. To be able to take my child somewhere safe, somewhere stable, somewhere where she can be a kid without crazy shit circling her, endangering her, poisoning her childhood.
I can’t save her now. Can’t even speak with her.
But there’s a special clock radio in the house. It has a secret camera in it. I face the clock and record last messages to Charlize and Silvia.
*
It can’t be long now, so I rub heads with Runty. He’s safer if he can’t defend me, if he’s out of the way when they launch their final assault, so I say goodbye and shut him in a room.
*
Night is blinding white again, stroboscopic, splitting open, insane, as more flash-bang grenades come in and explode, and now a barrage of gas grenades come smashing through all the windows – glass and debris fill the air ahead of the brutal and rapidly spreading CS fumes.
It penetrates the wet towels I’ve wrapped around my head and I lock my lungs for as long as I can but I’m heaving and thrashing and there’s no holding forever – so it’s over.
*
I’ve held out for 44 hours with one handgun against far superior armed forces with armoured vehicles and automatic weapons.
Gassed to fuck, I walk out to the front lawn where I fuck around with the pistol: everything in a dead spin. About to die. Chris put the gun down; Chris put the gun down. Shoot him. I put it down. I pick it up. Chris, Chris, Chris, Chris, this is the last second I will exist. Here it goes – thwack, thwack, thwack. They’re axing my last second to pieces, splintering it, jerking me, smashing me with some shit fired from a shotgun. Thwack, thwack, thwack. Down the hole I go, down to the ground. Black shadow figures swoop in on me: the cuffs they fix are the seals of hell. Someone cuts off my ballistic vest. The fire brigade decontaminates me. I’m a HAZMAT incident.
*
Chris’ vital signs were tested as he lay there gassed and hammered by bean bag rounds, sky high on methamphetamine, stressed beyond comprehension. His pulse was reportedly under 80 bpm.
Silvia tells the police that her mum was against her relationship with Chris, but that Chris has always been good to her, always being flirtatious and making her laugh and being a loveable larrikin. You can’t help who you love, she says, and, at the end of the day, he’s not a killer, just an old-time bank robber.
While I find her statement moving, Chris – who blurted out a proposal to Silvia in a court appearance after the siege – dismisses it as manipulative claptrap. ‘She’d say anything – she’s devious,’ he says. ‘But I did love her. And she was a mad fuck.’
*
CRYING. PINING.
I broke down during the police submission. I was really fucking spewing – I couldn’t control it. This isn’t faking. Do you think I want the media to see me fucking crying and shit? You know, sobbing uncontrollably because they played the CCTV footage of the fucking siege, the flash-bangs, and its re-triggering putting me back into that state – the house is all fucked up inside, it’s blown to fucking pieces. And then I hear my dog in the background, crying, pining. That killed me – not being there for my dog. I know I’ll never see him alive again. He’s the child I could hold and play with even when my daughter was taken away from me.
Oh my god, Charlize, please know I love you beyond anything. They’re burying me again where no matter how much I shout and scream and punch the walls you can’t hear. They won’t bring you to my grave and I can’t go looking for you.
Charlize, I’m your dad. Whatever they tell you about me please know that my love for you grows stronger and stronger always.
71. ‘TOTALITY’
May 2014: Supreme Court of Victoria Melbourne criminal division
THE QUEEN
V
CHRISTOPHER BINSE
Judge: T Forrest J
Where held: Melbourne
Dates of hearing: 28, 29 and 30 April 2014
Date of sentence: 23 May 2014
Case may be cited as: R v Binse
CRIMINAL LAW – Sentence – Prohibited person possess firearm – Theft – Armed Robbery – Prohibited person use a firearm – Reckless conduct endangering serious injury – Long history of substantially similar criminal offending – Discount for owner’s conditions of incarceration – No rule of law whereby offender who is responsible for the onerousness of the conditions is not entitled to sentencing discount – Pleas of guilty – Evidence of some remorse – Specific deterrence of significant weight – Highly desirable that prior to release the offender be subject to the support and strict supervision of the parole board for a considerable period.
A
PPEARANCES: COUNSEL SOLICITORS
FOR THE CROWN: MR P CHADWICK QC
OFFICE OF PUBLIC PROSECUTIONS
WITH MS J WARREN
FOR THE ACCUSED MR S HOLT SC
VICTORIA LEGAL AID
…
It is necessary to say something of your background so that the context of your offending may be properly understood. You have spent 28 of the last 32 years in some form of custody. Your father taught you to steal. You were a ward of the state at 13, accommodated at Baltara Boys Home. By 14, you were detained at Turana Youth Training Centre and by 17 you were transferred to Pentridge while undergoing a Children’s Court sentence. By 18, you had been classified as a management unit prisoner and were imprisoned in the notorious H Division of that prison. You were transferred out to Beechworth after the suicide of another young prisoner held in that Division.
Since that time you have spent a comparatively little time in the community. In the 1980s, once you were eligible for adult court, you committed essentially street offences that escalated in seriousness. In 1993, you were convicted of four counts of armed robbery, receiving in total an aggregate sentence of seven years six months with a minimum of five years. These armed robberies were committed on banks and, with one exception, during trading hours. The learned sentencing judge noted that by then you had accumulated 96 previous convictions over 27 court appearances. You were then just 24 years old. Judge Lazarus expressed the hope that you were ready to retire from your career choice as an armed robber. Even then 21 years ago his Honour considered you to be institutionalised. He characterised your offending as ‘about as bad as bank robberies can be’ although he noted a certain politeness and decency in your approach.
Mayhem Page 27
