by Adrian Tame
When he didn’t have a police officer to stand up for him if the going was getting tough in court, Dennis was prepared to take extreme measures of his own. During one particularly difficult trial in mid-1985, facing charges of possession of drugs and firearms, he shot himself in the leg. Kathy remembers this incident well, having hidden the incriminating blood-stained jeans, though she denies another story at the time that he took rat poison to gain vital adjournments.
I took the jeans because I knew the police were coming. I ran down and put them in cold water and salt in the parlour. What amazed me, I couldn’t find a fucking hole in the jeans. He must have pulled the jeans down to shoot himself.
Relations between Dennis and the police plummeted, however, on 4 September 1985, when a shot was fired through a window at Prahran Police Station, missing by inches an officer on the Cyclops task force. But police were unable to prove that either Dennis or one of his brothers was involved.
I don’t know anything about the shooting at Prahran, but I know about when Dennis got the Prahran jack shop raided. Because he got sick of being raided. So he got them raided by their own mob, and when they opened the Prahran cops’ lockers they found jemmies, and a sergeant was charged.
The Enforcer was the longest-serving of the soldiers, a man whom Kathy had known for years, and whom she drafted into the ranks. He also doubled as bombmaker. Not a particularly large man, he had, as Kathy puts it, a mean look, which instantly discouraged all thought of aggression except from the very brave or the very stupid.
There’s not much known about him because he keeps to himself. He was a shifty man, used to drink a bottle of Scotch a day, so he couldn’t do nothing, no work. One day one of those five houses Dennis bought in Cubitt Street needed renovating, and he needed a tiler. Well, The Enforcer comes out with: ‘I used to be a tiler.’ Well, was it on, with Dennis and him! ‘You shifty fucking cunt, you’ve let me do all this work for years, and you’ve sat there, and drank me grog, and you’ve fucking done nothing.’ The Enforcer just laughed.
In January 1996, 1 was present during a reunion between Kathy and The Enforcer and the Talking Bone at Kathy’s home at Venus Bay. The three had not been together for seven years, and conversation soon settled on Dennis and the Richmond years.
Once again the extent of Dennis’s depravity became chillingly apparent, but so did the obvious loyalty and even affection which he inspired. The Enforcer was probably as close to him as anyone, apart from Kathy, during this period. He was paid an average of $2000 a week for four years to act as number one bodyguard.
As I stood in Kathy’s sun-filled garden, watching him climb from the car which had brought him down to Venus Bay, I was subconsciously bracing myself for the physically daunting nature of his appearance. I was pleasantly surprised. The man who emerged to shake my hand was dressed in Dennis’s old uniform of singlet and overalls, had his steel grey hair tied in a pony tail, and wore ‘granny’ spectacles which, with his high, domed forehead, gave him a slightly professorial look. The tattoos on his forearms were a more accurate pointer to The Enforcer’s real nature, however, as was his conversation once we settled down inside the house. Pleasant and amiable as he was throughout, there was no escaping the air of menace that emanated from the man. It was expressed in the manner in which he discussed the taking of human life and the extent to which he clearly accepted Dennis’s worst atrocities.
The Talking Bone was a different prospect. The ravages of her heroin addiction and life as a prostitute were evident in her face. But, as Kathy proudly explained, Dee (Kathy’s pet name for her) had been on a methadone program for some time, and seemed to have her addiction beaten. She had also been off the game for a considerable period. So, as she began to relax, something softer and more intelligent began to emerge from behind the gaunt and wary mask. Even so it was The Talking Bone who uttered the days only threat, albeit humorously: ‘We might not be able to let you go home after what you hear today/ she told me early in the conversation.
We had barely settled into our chairs in Kathy’s living room when The Enforcer spotted a photograph of himself on the wall, wearing a green shirt.
That’s the shirt Dennis gave me $200 for. He couldn’t handle anybody wearing green, it reminded him of what they made you wear inside [in prison]. It was 1985, my thirty-ninth birthday. My wife bought the shirt, paid $20 for it. Soon as I walked in he said: ‘What the fuck are you wearing that shirt for?’ He told me to get rid of it, and went to hand me $200 to buy another one. I told him I couldn’t, because it was a birthday present from my wife. He said he didn’t know it was my birthday, and gave me the $200, and another $1000 to take my wife out. He said to go and enjoy ourselves, and I needn’t come back till tomorrow, but make sure I got rid of the shirt. That was the start of giving all the soldiers $1000 for their birthdays.
It was also the start of an escalation involving Dennis’s aversion to the colour green. Soldiers and the family began deliberately wearing green to see how much Dennis would pay to watch them burn the offending garments. His youngest brother, Trevor, turned up one day in an apple green number he swore he had paid $300 for. Dennis coughed up without argument.
‘He was generous,’ The Enforcer remembered.
I was in the Cherry Tree with him one day when he gave a paper boy two $50 notes for a paper and told him to keep it. Then he gave him the paper back and told him to sell it again, because Dennis didn’t read papers, said they were full of shit. Even when there was an article about him and I’d tell him, he’d say: ‘Don’t bother reading it to me, it’ll be shit.’
But he was strange with money. He’d lend you $100, and if he thought you were trying to get away without paying it back, he was capable of killing over it. But if you went to him and told him you were having trouble, he could say, ‘Forget it,’ wipe the debt, and give you $200 to get you by. That was Dennis—if he liked you he’d kill for you, but if he didn’t like you, you might as well start digging your own hole yourself.
Even stranger was the way he practised his shoplifting skills. On more than one occasion Kathy has been known to say, ‘I stole everything I’m wearing.’ Dennis inherited the same cavalier attitude to the tiresome business of paying for one’s shopping as The Enforcer was able to testify. Together they made many trips to the local hardware stores to buy supplies for the latest refurbishment project on one of the properties.
We’d be buying timber, paint, the works, and often the bill would be around $2,000. We’d go up to the counter and Dennis would pull out this wad and tell me to settle it. While the bloke was doing up the invoice Dennis would take this packet off the counter with drill bits or something in it. He’d slip one of the bits into his pocket and put the packet back. Half the time the bloke would know what was going on and he’d look at me, and raise his eyebrows and I’d just nod to put it on the bill. We’d get outside and Dennis would say: ‘Got away with it again.’ He thought he was keeping his hand in.
When he found out his Vietnamese neighbour didn’t own, or as it turned out, particularly want a TV set, Dennis went out and bought him one—’Poor bloke hasn’t got a TV,’ he kept mumbling to himself.
It was from the Vietnamese neighbour that Dennis acquired much of his legendary cooking ability. ‘He used to call it Dennis’s triple chilli,’ The Enforcer said, ‘and none of us could handle it, used to make your mouth numb. I’d tell him I wasn’t hungry and go and buy six dim sims and eat ’em outside.’
The Enforcer was paid his $2000 a week to protect Dennis from his enemies, but actually earned the money by protecting Dennis from himself—the single, biggest ongoing threat to his existence. This included taking a gun from him—something he doubts anybody else ever did—on three separate occasions, including the incident with the police helicopter.
‘There’s no doubt he would have blown the chopper away if he’d hit it,’ he says. Kathy and The Enforcer share a theory that the absence of any comeback over the helicopter shooting was because the noise of t
he engine drowned the sound of gunfire; and the chopper’s position, over Dennis’s Cubitt Street back yard, made it impossible for the occupants to see what was happening directly beneath them. The possibility that one of Dennis’s influential police contacts got him off the hook for such an act cannot be entirely discounted. The Enforcer recounts another shooting incident.
Then there was New Year’s at the Bryant and May factory, I think it was 1983-84. There was a tower with a clock on it, and Dennis had two guns, one a .357 Magnum with a thirty-centimetre barrel. He was about 150 metres away and he shot the minute hand, it hung down swinging like a pendulum. Five minutes later the cops came and knocked on the door: ‘Dennis, we know this is New Year, but can you pull up on the gunfire?’ Dennis says: ‘What are you fucking talking about?’ ‘Someone’s shot the clock tower.’
He comes back: ‘Every time something gets shot in Richmond I get blamed.’ So they said: ‘We’ve got to be right 90 per cent of the time. Happy New Year.’ And Dennis says: ‘Happy New Year you dogs, go and get fucked.’
And when Dennis tripped over a pile of rubbish in the back lane at Stephenson Street, lost his temper and started a blaze big enough to bring several fire engines racing to the scene, it was again The Enforcer who had to smooth things over—with near fatal results.
I heard all these sirens going from Stephenson Street, and to get there in a hurry I ran across the railway line and nearly got my head knocked off by a train. I was on $10,000 bail at the time, and Kathy said: ‘Never mind, as long as your head would have rolled down here I could have taken it to court and got the ten thousand back.’
Dennis’s rage when crossed was legendary, and The Enforcer was one of the few people prepared to attempt to calm him down. The two men made a bet with one another during the height of the heroin dealing, mainly because they were often paid by small-time users in small change, including one-dollar coins. Each bought a giant-sized beer can money box and began keeping the one-dollar coins in them. The one who filled his can first took the lot. Some months into the bet The Enforcer was short of cash and told Dennis he was going to open his can— and together they counted out $3,000 in coins.
We were both on speed so Dennis decided it would be a good idea to count his. It weighed about three times as much as mine, so we figured it should be around $10,000. He got the top off and poured it on the floor, and out came ten kilos of half-inch washers. We worked out straightaway what had happened.
Cossie, the house guard at one of the properties, had just shot through, we knew he’d gone to Adelaide where his family was. He must have gone and bought the washers, and another beer can money box, and put the washers in until they weighed the same as Dennis’s can and then swapped them over. Dennis was frothing at the mouth and his eyes were popping out of his head. It was two o’clock in the morning, but he didn’t care.
He told me to get straight out to Tullamarine and get a plane to Adelaide. I told him: ‘Dennis, there’s no planes flying at this time.’ So he pulled this roll of notes out, about $50,000, and said: ‘Get down to Mordialloc [light aircraft airport] and charter a plane and get over there.’ Then he gave me a .357 Magnum to shoot him with. But we didn’t know where Cossie lived in Adelaide, and when I reminded Dennis of this he said: ‘Just ask people.’ ‘Sure Dennis,’ I said. ‘Wander around Adelaide with a .357 Magnum in me hand and say, “Excuse me, I’m looking for a bloke called Cossie, do you know where he lives?”’ We found out later he’d gone to Perth, anyway.
Another acquaintance, Scotty, also ended on the wrong side of Dermis, but was less fortunate than Cossie. The Enforcer remembers Scotty as a street dealer who informed on Dennis when police put him under pressure.
What I liked about Scotty was he declared himself, he said as soon as the cops threatened him, he told them anything they wanted to know. This time he’d said something about us, and Dennis was waiting for him to come round. He had put a poker in the fire, getting the end white hot. I got fed up with waiting and went down The Cherry Tree. I was sitting there and Scotty comes running past at 100 miles an hour with an ice pick hanging out his back. Dennis had changed his mind about the poker, but when we saw him later Scotty was more worried what the ice pick did to his leather jacket than the hole in his back.
Every now and then the pace became too hot, even for The Enforcer, and he needed to get away. ‘There was one time I had to have a break from Dennis and everything, so I went into hiding for a week,’ he said. ‘Dennis shit himself, because he thought I was dead, and he was next. We always said if the police or his enemies were going to kill him, they’d get rid of me first, so I wasn’t running around after he’d gone.’
The Enforcer knew things were starting to get out of hand, even for Richmond, when he noticed how children involved in the extended family of Dennis’s evil empire were being affected.
One time I was at 102, the drug house, and we’d closed the doors for the night. There was this woman junkie banging at the door, shouting: ‘Kathy, open up! Sell me some smack or I’ll call the police.’ I ran out with a .38 in me jocks, and there’s this woman, about twenty-one. She says: ‘Where’s Kathy?’ I told her to fuck off and she kept on, so I pulled the gun out. She had a baby and she held it up in front of her face and said: ‘If you shoot me, you’ll have to shoot the baby first.’ I said: ‘Christ, lady, just go home.’ There was another junkie wanted to swap her ten-day-old baby for a cap of heroin.
Children within the inner circle were faring little better. One six-year-old was well known for her impersonations of her own mother. On request or to impress strangers, she would jab an imaginary needle in her arm, stick out her tongue and keel over, lying motionless. ‘That’s Mum OD-ing [over-dosing],’ she’d explain.
Equally shocking was an exchange The Enforcer overheard one morning. He and Dennis had been discussing the need to cut a shipment of heroin, otherwise it would be too strong for the street and cost people their lives. Throughout the conversation a five-year-old had been watching a children’s program on TV in the same room, apparently riveted to the screen. Later her mother arrived and asked what she’d been up to. ‘Just watching TV.’ And what had Dennis and The Enforcer been doing? Without turning from the television the five-year-old said matter-of-factly: ‘They’ve got to cut the smack again so nobody OD’s.’
About a year later the same child accompanied her father and The Enforcer to a Richmond hotel for a drink in the beer garden. When the barmaid left the till unattended to go inside the hotel, The Enforcer’s companion turned to the girl and said: ‘What does Daddy do when the barmaid’s back’s turned?’ Wordlessly the six-year-old walked behind the bar, expertly opened the till without registering a sale, and returned to the table clutching a wad of notes.
One youngster The Enforcer took particular notice of was Jason Ryan, Dennis’s nephew, who arrived in Richmond at the age of thirteen. ‘I picked him as a coward straight away, and I told Dennis to get rid of him, but he wouldn’t listen. He’d done something and I went to belt him and he pulled a knife on me. At thirteen. I was going to break his arm, and I should have done. He went off crying to his uncle.’
Champion footballer Fred Cook, who has blamed Dennis for introducing him to the drugs which led to several court appearances over the years, was someone The Enforcer remembers with little affection—’He was good with words, but he was a user.’
The night before his wedding Cook arrived at Richmond to explain to Dennis and The Enforcer that, despite their friendship, he couldn’t invite them to the ceremony because the media would be there, and he couldn’t afford to be seen associating with them. ‘It didn’t stop him asking for some speed though,’ recalls The Enforcer.
He wanted two grams for $100, so I went and got it and gave it to him and said: ‘This is a wedding present from Dennis and me.’ Dennis’s eyes popped out of his head, because we were both flat broke at this time. But he didn’t know what speed it was. About three months earlier we’d got this stuff and it was mostly E
psom Salts—we spent the entire night fighting each other for the shithouse. I gave Fred four grams of this stuff. He told us later it ruined his wedding and his honeymoon.
There was another time when Dennis OD’d and the intensive care ambulance came. Fred was there and I gave him $1000 to pay them not to say anything about what had happened. When he came back in from seeing them off I asked if he’d given them the money. He said: ‘No, I gave them something more valuable, I gave them my autograph.’ But he did do the right thing and give us back the $1000. That was Fred Cook.
* * *
I. Dennis married Sissy (Heather Hill) while he was in Pentridge gaol in 1981 (see below). She was originally charged with attempted murder, but the offence was later reduced to one of grievous bodily harm. Despite alleged admissions she made, Sissy was found not guilty when the victim failed to testify against her.
II. The name of this notorious Melbourne detective, gaoled on corruption charges, has been omitted for legal reasons.
III. Dennis painted a black satin sheet with a white skull and cross bones, and flew it outside 49 Cubitt Street.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Charnel House
‘GET OUT OF THAT fucking bed, cunt. I’ve just blown that fucking arsehole’s head off. Get in there and clean up.’
The voice coming from Kathy’s bedroom door at 35 Stephenson Street is unmistakable. It’s Dennis. He’s been days without sleep and, as always, he’s rocking backwards and forwards on his heels, his form silhouetted in the doorway by the hall light. He wears a jacket over his bib and brace overalls.
It’s two o’clock on a Sunday morning in mid-August 1984. Kathy has gone to bed about three hours earlier. A party of sorts has been going on at Dennis’s place next door since the previous afternoon. Besides Dennis, those present are his girl-friend, known as ‘Miss Jones’ for legal reasons, his thirteen-year-old nephew Jason, Wayne, the builder Dennis has employed for the last eighteen months to renovate his various properties, Wayne’s wife Sandy and the couple’s son, Dale, still in his early teens.
