Crime Time: Australians Behaving Badly

by Sue Bursztynski

  Geoffrey started his criminal career early, stealing and selling lawnmowers when he was only eleven years old. By 1977, as a young man, he was selling drugs on a small scale.

  But Geoffrey Chambers wanted a nice house, fast cars and all the other enjoyable things that money could buy – and he was a heroin user himself. Heroin was an expensive drug.

  He began to buy heroin from Thailand and to sell it all over Australia. For a while, he had a Thai girlfriend who helped him, but she was sent back to Thailand as an illegal migrant. She stayed in touch, though, and continued to help him commit his crimes.

  Chambers’ next girlfriend was a trainee nurse called Sue. He introduced her to heroin and the two of them travelled to Asia quite often, bringing back illegal drugs. They were doing well and had a nice house by the sea, but they were worried about the police and decided to move to Sydney, travelling by car. On the way, the car crashed and Sue was killed.

  Chambers was depressed. He didn’t care much what happened to him after that. He drank far too much and took drugs.

  In August 1983, he took a drug-smuggling trip to Penang in Malaysia for a drug boss called Paul Musarri. He was supposed to hand over the drugs to two other Australians whom he was to meet there, but he kept some of the heroin, burying it near his hotel.

  The Australian police knew about the drug smugglers, though not about Chambers. Back in Australia, the pair were arrested. Paul Musarri was also in trouble.

  Musarri desperately needed the money from the buried heroin. He asked Chambers to fetch it, but Chambers would need someone to help him. Kevin Barlow was boarding with a woman called Debbie whose boyfriend, John Asciak, was working with Musarri. Barlow seemed like a good person to ask, as he needed some money to pay off his car, which he was about to lose. He agreed to go, even though Debbie begged him not to.

  From the very beginning, the two men made mistakes. They weren’t supposed to travel together, as doing so would put them in more danger, but they did. They certainly weren’t supposed to spend any of the money, but they did. Chambers and Barlow spent their first week in Malaysia drinking and using drugs. Making more mistakes was inevitable.

  When the time came to smuggle the heroin, Barlow became nervous. The plan was that Chambers and Barlow would hide the drugs in their bodies. This was unpleasant, but a common way of smuggling drugs. If Barlow had followed the plan, perhaps they wouldn’t have been caught. But he refused. In the end, they hid the drugs in their luggage.

  At Penang airport, their drugs were found and they were arrested.

  Now they were in real trouble. In Malaysia, drug smugglers were hanged.

  Australians were shocked. No one in Australia had been executed since Ronald Ryan’s hanging in the 1960s. And these two men were small criminals compared to those who had sent them. While they were in Penang prison, using heroin supplied by guards, the Australian government tried hard to get their sentences reduced. A National Crime Authority officer even visited John Asciak, who was in prison for another crime, to ask him to give evidence that would help keep the men from hanging, but he refused.

  On 7 July 1986, after two years in prison, and in spite of a huge public outcry in Australia, the two drug smugglers were hanged. Geoffrey Chambers and Kevin Barlow were the first Westerners to be executed in Malaysia for drug offences.

  DID YOU KNOW…?

  An old pensioner called Billy Mears died in 2002, too poor to afford a tombstone. In 1949, Billy had escaped from jail with a more famous crook, Darcy Dugan. Among Billy’s belongings, the minister from Sydney’s Wayside Chapel found a lottery ticket which had won enough money to buy the tombstone.

  DAVID AND CATHERINE BIRNIE

  The story of the Birnies of Perth is a strong warning against ever accepting a lift from strangers, even if they look like a nice young couple.

  Both David and Catherine Birnie had miserable childhoods. Neither of them had many friends, but they fell in love early, when they were both fifteen. They were jailed when they were eighteen, for housebreaking, but David kept committing crimes – 21 over five years. Catherine’s parole officer told her that she and David were no good for each other and advised her to break up with him.

  For a while, Catherine took this advice. She got a job and married her boss’s son. They had several children together.

  However, in 1985, Catherine left her husband and children to live with David. She changed her surname to Birnie. They moved into a house at 3 Moorhouse Street in Willagee. David got a job at a car wrecker’s in April 1986.

  Later that year, women started disappearing. The first was Mary Neilson, a university student who vanished one day in October when she went to buy some tyres for her car.

  Susannah Candy, a high school student, disappeared a couple of weeks later. She was forced to write her parents two letters saying she was safe.

  Denise Brown, a computer operator, went missing on her way home from a friend’s house. She phoned home to say she was okay, but her friends worried anyway – with good reason.

  The fourth victim was Noelene Patterson, a former flight attendant, who was working at the Nedlands Golf Club. She went missing on 30 October, but her disappearance wasn’t reported until several days later, after the Birnies had been caught.

  On 10 November, a half-naked teenage girl ran into a shopping complex, begging for help. She told police that she had been kidnapped at knifepoint by a couple, while giving them directions. They had driven her to their house and chained her to the bed. The man had raped her twice. They had forced her to ring home, saying she was safe. The girl had escaped when the man was at work and the woman went to answer the door. She gave a good description of the house.

  The police found the Birnies’ house easily enough. They searched it and found some evidence, but needed more. They decided to question them separately, in hope that one of them would break down and confess.

  It didn’t take long for them to get confessions, first from David, then from Catherine. At 7.00 p.m., the Detective Sergeant said, ‘It’s getting dark. Best we take the shovel and dig them up’.

  To his amazement, David agreed. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘There’s four of them.’

  The first grave was Denise Brown’s; she had accepted a lift. After David had abused her, they took her to a pine plantation, where he did it again, while Catherine held a torch. Then he stabbed his victim. Killing her was harder than they thought. A larger knife also didn’t kill her so finally they hit her on the head with an axe.

  Mary Neilson, their first victim, had made the mistake of trying to buy tyres from David, whom she had met at the car wrecker’s. She had been buried in the Gleneagles National Park, after David strangled her with a nylon strap.

  Susannah Candy had been hitchhiking. This time, David asked Catherine to do the killing, as proof of her love for him. Catherine strangled the girl.

  The last grave was that of Noelene Patterson, who’d been unlucky enough to run out of petrol when the Birnies were passing. Catherine spat on this one. David hadn’t wanted to kill this victim, making Catherine jealous. Catherine had insisted, so he’d given their victim sleeping tablets and strangled her while she slept.

  Both David and Catherine were sentenced to ‘strict security life imprisonment’. This meant that they couldn’t get parole for twenty years. From their separate jails, they exchanged thousands of letters.

  David Birnie killed himself in 2005. Catherine is unlikely ever to be released.

  DID YOU KNOW…?

  During World War II, night time street lighting was reduced, to make it harder for the enemy to bomb cities. This was known as ‘brownout’. Unfortunately, it wasn’t only the enemy who were a problem. And if brownout made bombing harder, it made murder easier. American soldier Eddie Leonski was stationed in Melbourne, where he continued his drinking binges. Leonski had been in trouble before, trying to strangle a woman in America. He drank a lot and became violent. In May 1942, he used the brownout to commit three murders, all of women ol
der than himself. He was caught when a soldier he’d confided in reported him. During his trial, Leonski didn’t explain why he committed murder. He only said of one of his victims, ‘I wanted that voice. I choked her’. Despite this, he was found sane and was executed in November 1942.

  JOHN WAYNE GLOVER

  THE GRANNY KILLER

  In 1989, a number of older women were attacked in the expensive Sydney suburb of Mosman. Some survived. Most didn’t.

  At first, police thought the killer must be a young man, perhaps even a boy who had issues with his grandmother.

  One man, Raymond Roper, was attacked from behind, while he was wearing a long coat and a floppy straw hat. When he turned to defend himself, the attacker, realising he was a man, ran away. Raymond said his attacker was about 30, with blond hair, so police started looking for someone young. Just in case, they also considered teenagers.

  That was a mistake.

  The first victim, 84-year-old Gwendoline Mitchelhill, was hit on the head outside her home in March 1989. Strangely, her shoes had been taken off and laid neatly by her head.

  This became a ‘signature’ of the killer.

  The next victim, Lady Winifreda Ashton, 84, died in the bin room of her unit block. Her shoes, hat and handbag had been laid neatly next to her walking stick.

  Someone truly sick was at work – but who?

  Police continued to check out local schools and watch for a young man.

  The next victim, Doris Cox, survived, but couldn’t identify her attacker. She did remember being startled by a young skateboarder. This seemed to support the police’s theory about the killer’s youth.

  But the attacker wasn’t young. He was a 58-year-old pie salesman, John Glover, who lived with his wife, two children and in-laws.

  John Glover wasn’t young, but he did have issues with older women. His mother, Freda, had left him with his father and taken his younger brother with her. Even before she left, she was not a good influence on him. During World War II, she had made money illegally. She even burned down her own shop for the insurance.

  Glover arrived in Australia from Britain in 1956, at first living in Melbourne, occasionally getting into trouble with the law. Then he met and married Sydney woman Gay Rolls. They moved to Sydney. His mother-in-law, Essie, made it clear she didn’t like him.

  However he felt about Freda and Essie, he didn’t kill them. Instead, he took his anger out on other older women.

  A year before the murders started, he met a woman called Joan Sinclair and they began a romance.

  In January 1989, Glover attacked a woman called Margaret Todhunter. She survived and described her attacker. For a long time, no one made a connection between the grey-haired man in a suit and tie she described and the young thug police were hunting. Another survivor, 82-year-old Euphemia Carnie, gave a description a lot like Margaret Todhunter’s.

  Now the police began to wonder: could their man be older than they had thought?

  In early November, Glover killed two women in as many days, Margaret Pahud and Olive Cleveland. Next, a woman called Muriel Falconer was bashed over the head in her own hallway. This time, Glover left a helpful footprint in the blood around the body.

  An old woman he attacked in bed at the Greenwich Hospital pressed an alarm button. A nurse called the police, who suspected him, but hadn’t enough evidence to hold him. They decided to keep an eye on him.

  Glover tried to commit suicide. He left a suicide note for his family, saying there would be no more grannies. He survived that suicide attempt. The police found the note, but, for some reason, didn’t do anything with it.

  On 19 March, Glover decided to kill Joan Sinclair, then himself. It didn’t occur to the police watching her house that he might be planning to murder his girlfriend. After a few hours, however, they entered Joan’s home. She was dead, bashed over the head. John Glover was in the bath with Scotch and tablets, just about to slip under the water.

  He was convicted of six counts of murder and sentenced to life in prison. There were six more murders which police believed he had committed, but they couldn’t be sure.

  His family never went to see him and in 1992, his wife said he would be better off dead.

  In 2005, John Glover was found dead in his prison cell, where he was thought to have killed himself. He’d finally succeeded in committing suicide.

  JULIAN KNIGHT

  HODDLE STREET MASSACRE

  From an early age, Julian Knight, the Hoddle Street killer, was fascinated by guns and death. A schoolmate later said he brought more than 100 photos of dead bodies to school to show the other students. It was said that he enjoyed describing in detail how bullets had damaged the bodies. Graffiti he had scribbled on his textbooks showed a disturbingly racist attitude.

  In January 1987, he started officer training at the Royal Military College, Duntroon, but he didn’t last long. He wasn’t very good at anything except the weapons-based subjects. When he stabbed his sergeant at a Canberra nightclub, he was asked to leave the army for good. His trial for assault and malicious wounding was supposed to take place in June, but was postponed to November.

  If he had been tried and jailed in June, perhaps the Hoddle Street tragedy would never have happened, but by November, police had a lot more to worry about than one fight in a nightclub. Julian Knight was back in Melbourne. He had killed seven people and injured nineteen more.

  What made him decide to gather all those bullets and guns on the evening of 9 August 1987, and go on a random shooting spree? And why Hoddle Street, anyway? He wasn’t after his enemies. He wasn’t trying to get revenge on anyone. The people he killed didn’t know him. They were just there.

  Years later, the policeman who had questioned him right after the crime said that Julian had been happy and excited after the killings. He had bragged about what he had just done. It was fun, for him.

  All we know is that he left home at 9.29 p.m. and that a minute later he was shooting at people.

  He shot a woman who had got out of her car – six times, till she was dead. Then he shot two people who came to help her. Three more people died in the next few minutes. He kept shooting at anyone passing on the street and then at police. He shot at a police car and then at a police helicopter, forcing it to land. Finally, after a chase through the streets of Melbourne’s suburbs, police managed to catch him in Fitzroy North, just before 10.15 p.m.

  At this time, Victorian law didn’t allow a life sentence without parole. Also, Julian was only nineteen. That meant, as a young offender, he had to have a chance to reform. He was sentenced to a minimum of 27 years. He could apply for parole in 2014.

  In jail, he was allowed to further his education. The idea was that it would make him a better person when he left. Unfortunately, the education he chose was not one that suggested he was planning to go straight when he left jail. In 2001, he had finished a degree in military strategy and weapons – at taxpayers’ expense!

  Over the years, he also went to court many times to complain. He didn’t like being in a high-security prison. He was angry when he got into trouble for having sharp things in his cell and computer disks with information about the prison staff. He considered it an abuse of his human rights when they took away his Ku Klux Klan and Nazi collections.

  In 2004, after he had spent about $250,000 worth of taxpayers’ money on his many complaints, he was declared a vexatious litigant – someone who was wasting time and money on silly protests. He was not allowed to take any more legal action in Victoria for ten years, except with special permission.

  In 2007, he complained that the prison authorities were interfering with his rehabilitation when they wouldn’t allow him to send a letter of apology to a victim. He wanted to be gradually moved to lowersecurity prisons and have access to programs that would help him after release.

  Unless he has changed a lot, it’s unlikely his wish will be granted in the near future.

  THE SIGMA BREAKIN

  It was like something
out of a Hollywood thriller. The team of burglars had been practising for months. They had been checking out various chemical companies in Victoria and South Australia and decided on a Melbourne company called Sigma.

  Sigma made drugs to treat such problems as ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder, a behaviour problem suffered mostly by young boys), but the ingredients could be used to make speed, a dangerous street drug that would be worth a fortune to the robbers. George Lipp, Paul Elliott, Brian Zerma and Mark Wills weren’t professional criminals. They just wanted to be rich.

  There were two factories in Melbourne’s southeast, one in Clayton, the other in Croydon. They were going to merge and there wasn’t much time for the burglary to be carried out. The burglars broke in 25 times over the nine months before the real thing. During these practice runs, they looked up the company’s records to see what was in the safe. They checked the security systems and found their way around the huge complex. They had $30,000 worth of equipment to help them in their heist.

  What they didn’t have was someone who knew how to get into the safe where the containers of drugs were kept.

  Lipp remembered a man he used to know in the early 1980s who worked in the security industry. He was an expert on safes. Let’s call him ‘Fred’.

  One night in August 1996, Lipp visited the safe expert. First he asked him if he could help open a safe for his mother, who’d lost her key. Fred agreed and went with him. After he’d opened it, Lipp asked him if he could open a much more complicated safe. He showed him a photo of what was obviously not a home safe. He offered him $100,000 to open it.

  Fred knew he’d been asked to help with a robbery. To give himself time, he asked for a clearer picture of the safe. Next day, he told Chris Gyngell, the state manager of Chubb Security, what had happened. Gyngell rang the police drug squad.