The Matriarch

by Adrian Tame

  Kathy dragged her back into the parlour—it wasn’t good for business to have customers collapsing in the street early in the morning—put her head under a cold tap, and began walking her. Everybody joined in to help, including two regular customers, hairdresser Scott Findlay and his lover Gary McKay, a nurse. Kathy then left, believing Helga was recovering.

  Next I heard Dennis had sent someone down to the Yarra with buckets to fill up the bath at the parlour. He was putting her in there so it’d look as if she drowned in the Yarra. She died of an overdose—I don’t know if it was the smack she bought, or whatever they say Dennis injected her with.

  Coroner Mr Hugh Adams SM conducted the inquest on 9 May with Dennis sitting in the courtroom. He did not give evidence, and despite what other witnesses had to say about his role in Helga’s death, was allowed to leave before the verdict was handed down.

  Findlay’s statement was read to the hearing. It detailed regular visits he had made to the parlour at 108 Stephenson Street to score heroin. About young Jason Ryan and his uncles, Findlay said: ‘Jason Ryan would be approximately thirteen years of age. He has been present on numerous occasions when drug dealings have taken place. I have seen this Jason carrying the same type of guns that the police carry. I have had a look at these guns and know them to be real. He has on numerous occasions pointed firearms at me.’ Findlay said he had also seen Dennis, Jamie and Trevor with guns, ‘usually in their back pockets or down the front of their pants’.

  Findlay said that when he and McKay approached the parlour on 8 November they saw a woman they later learned was Helga. ‘I remember her because she was off her face. She could hardly walk; she was staggering from side to side and smiling all the time. She was definitely not drunk. I can tell. Her eyes were really pinned. I did not consider this to be anything unusual.’

  Later Findlay saw Kathy enter the building with Wagnegg saying: ‘Quick, Helga’s OD’d.’ In the back yard of the parlour he and McKay then helped Kathy to walk Helga and apply mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and heart massage.

  ‘I did this for about fifteen minutes. Dennis Allen then turned up and told us to stop and leave her and get away from her. He said: “I will give her a hit of speed to get her around.” Dennis told me and Gary to piss off. Kathy Pettingill left when Dennis Allen arrived.’

  Findlay said Dennis later told him: ‘Leave her and she should come around in a little while.’ Over the next twenty minutes McKay and Findlay checked on Helga where she was still lying in the back yard.

  ‘I was of the opinion she was dead.’ Findlay said in his statement. ‘After about twenty minutes Dennis Allen came back again and decided to give her another hit of speed. When he walked through the kitchen past me I saw he had a needle.’

  Denise Strongman, an employee at the parlour who was also present, then told Findlay that Dennis had injected Helga in the neck. Dennis had placed a large piece of wood over Helga, saying it should be left there so the police helicopter would not see her if it flew over. Shortly afterwards Findlay and McKay left the parlour.

  Findlay said he had decided to make his statement, although: ‘I genuinely believe that my life would be worth nothing if any of these people found out that I was making a statement to the police about these matters.’

  Under cross examination by Andrew Fraser, representing both Kathy and Denise Strongman, Findlay conceded that the two women and Dennis had been trying to help Helga. Findlay denied suggestions from Chris Dane, appearing for Dennis, that while making his statement police had provided him with drugs to relieve withdrawal symptoms from his heroin habit.

  McKay said his attempts to revive Helga were interrupted: ‘Dennis was there and he wouldn’t let me.’ McKay said he phoned from work later that night and was told by Denise that as far as she knew Helga was all right because she had gone by the time she (Denise) returned from a shopping trip.

  Kathy’s statement, also read to the inquest, included details of Helga’s attempt on 8 November to get work at the parlour. ‘She told me she had just got out of gaol, she was broke, and wanted a job badly. She was slurring her speech and stumbling. I told her I couldn’t employ her at the moment. I was fully staffed.’ Kathy’s statement revealed that she had found Helga one hour later lying on the footpath outside The Cherry Tree. She had brought her into the yard of the parlour and splashed water on her face. ‘I asked her what she had taken. She slurred that she had taken 100 Serepax.’ Kathy said that after further attempts to revive Helga she had left the parlour to lie down at 35 Stephenson. ‘I rang up 108 every ten minutes for the next hour to check on how she was. The boys (Findlay and McKay) said that she was all right. I told them that when she was good enough to tell her to go. I never saw her again. It was approximately one week later I heard that she was found in the river. I couldn’t believe it.’

  Some years later during an unconnected court hearing Jason Ryan said Dennis had ordered him to get a bucket of water from the Yarra. ‘Dennis tipped it down her (Helga’s) throat and held her head in the bucket for about half an hour,’ he said.

  But despite these efforts the inquest heard medical evidence from a pathologist indicating that Helga had definitely not died from drowning. Nor had he been able to find puncture marks in her neck. Further medical evidence revealed an absence of amphetamines in Helga’s body, but morphine (heroin) was found in the blood and urine.

  At this stage in the proceedings Dennis’s solicitor asked for permission for himself and Dennis to withdraw from the hearing. The Coroner agreed after counsel for the Director of Public Prosecutions said: ‘It would not in the circumstances be appropriate to call Mr Allen, for legal principles.’

  Next witness was Detective Sergeant Paul William HigginsII of the armed robbery squad. He read from his own statement revealing that ‘an informant of mine’ had told him the day after Helga’s visit to the parlour that she had overdosed on heroin and her body had been dumped in the Yarra. The informant said Helga had been in The Cherry Tree on the day of her death, and had injected herself with heroin in the toilet area, had consumed alcohol and then collapsed on the footpath outside the hotel. Higgins said that ‘He (the informant) stated that he later learned that the body had been dumped in the Yarra. I asked him who placed the body in the Yarra, and he stated that he couldn’t tell me for fear of his life. I asked him whether he placed the body in the Yarra, and he replied: “Definitely not me.”’

  Under cross examination from the Coroner, Higgins said he had had regular dealings with this informant, and that he had been ‘very reliable’.

  Was this mystery informant Dennis, playing a form of double agent role with the police? Was he passing on information about a crime in which he was deeply involved, knowing that his relationship with Higgins and other officers would ensure no awkward questions would be asked?

  Next came evidence from a horse strapper named Jeremy Cassin, who said he was driving along the southeastern freeway by the side of the Yarra under a full moon at 4.15 a.m. when he saw ‘three people standing on the embankment and one of the persons was in the water up to his waist . . .’ Later when he heard radio news of an anonymous telephone call mentioning a body in the river. Cassin contacted police.

  Helga’s body was not recovered from the river until the Monday, 12 November, when a pensioner, John Sanders, was fishing under the freeway and saw what appeared to be material floating towards him.

  Detective Senior Constable James O’Brien of Richmond CIB then told the Coroner of an interview with Dennis two months after Helga’s disappearance. After speaking to Charles Nikakis, his solicitor, Dennis was asked to make a statement and replied: ‘I don’t know if I would or not. It’s up to you, anyway. I don’t give a fuck.’

  After responding to further questions about Helga with a ‘no comment’, Dennis promised O’Brien he would contact him if he received any information about Helga’s death. He was allowed to leave the police station shortly afterwards.

  Announcing his findings, Mr Adams said: �
��It is quite clear that the deceased was dead before she was placed into the river. The person or persons responsible for the disposal of her body into the Yarra could, if their identity is subsequently detected, face charges under the Victorian Coroner’s Act re the unlawful disposal of a body.’ His verdict read: ‘I find that Helga Elfriede Wagnegg died on an unknown date and place as a result of asphyxia caused by a reaction to an intravenous administration of heroin. On the evidence adduced I am unable to determine if the administration of this substance was self-administered or not, nor am I able to determine the identity of the person or persons responsible for the placing of the body of the deceased in the river.’

  In a chilling aftermath to Helga’s murder, in early 1996 I interviewed The Talking Bone, who was working at the Stephenson Street parlour at the time of Helga’s disappearance. She remembers being summoned by Dennis to 49 Cubitt Street the day after Helga’s death.

  He asked me what I was going to tell the police and the inquest, and I told him I would say I didn’t know the lady. He said that was good, and then he told me he was going to show me what would happen if I caused trouble.

  He walked me into the bathroom, and it was completely lined with black plastic sheets—floor, walls and ceiling. I knew what that was for. There were two sides to Dennis, and all you had to do was push the wrong button.’

  Kathy believes Helga’s body was transported to the Yarra in a van, one of three vehicles owned by Dennis. This van had almost certainly been used earlier for the disposal of other bodies, and was to gain a certain, anonymous fame all of its own—in the movies.

  Dennis had this van. It was all metal in the back so he could hose it out. It wouldn’t fit under the bridge [on the way to the Yarra] but he forced it under. It was just near the Rosella factory. It wasn’t a small van. More like a small furniture truck, that’s the only way I can describe it. It was all crumpled on top after he went under the bridge. Helga’s in the back of it. He was taking it to the Yarra, and he threw the body in and the police got it out.

  Kathy isn’t sure if Dennis was the mystery informer, but she does remember a scene shortly afterwards, almost too surreal to be credible.

  Just after Helga, this morning me and The Enforcer have decided to walk around Cubitt Street about nine o’clock. And I see coppers everywhere. And I’m thinking: ‘Aah, fuck, what’s he done now?’ And I look over and there’s film cameras. They were making that movie Malcolm.III It didn’t jerry that the coppers weren’t real. But when you’re coming round, and you see all that, and it’s right near Dennis’s . . .

  I go to see the movie, and here’s this van, the crumpled one, that he’s got rid of because he don’t want no-one to know about it, it’s gone all around the world. It’s in the scene with the car splitting in half in the fucking movie Malcolm. I go back and I tell him. I said: ‘It’s in the fucking movie.’ He said: ‘Oh, don’t talk shit.’

  The next and possibly most keenly felt death in Kathy’s life was that of Jamie, the second youngest of her eight sons, from a heroin overdose at the age of twenty-one. Jamie died on 14 May 1985, a few days after the inquest into Helga Wagnegg’s death. Kathy still mourns Jamie, and misses him with a fierce possessiveness. She also believes the overdose that took his life was deliberately administered.

  The theory among police at the time of his death was that Dennis committed fratricide because Jamie was angling for a bigger share of his empire. Kathy disputes this, saying it is highly unlikely Dennis was involved: Jamie had demonstrated his loyalty to his elder brother too many times—the shooting incident involving ‘Snaggles’ and Keryn Thompson, and another episode where Jamie did time for his brother after an armed robbery went wrong.

  I met Jamie intermittently in his early teens, and can testify first hand to the charm that won him many friends, and a reputation as the warmest natured of Kathy’s children. But as with Dennis, there was another aspect to Jamie’s character. It was Jamie who demonstrated a cold, undeniably callous streak when he responded to his own father’s death with the words: ‘Well, I’m not bloody worried about him.’ And when Kathy wept over the heroin-induced downfall of Victor Gouroff, Jamie said: ‘I don’t give a fuck, I’ve got the coat.’ It was this darker side of Jamie that held sway when his life slid rapidly downhill during his final months in 1984 and early 1985. It seemed Jamie had the throttle on his life jammed wide open. There was an awful inevitability about his end.

  Kathy’s recollections of his birth are still special to her.

  He came with such a rush that the blood vessels in his eyes burst. The nurses couldn’t believe it. He’s lying on his stomach and he’s holding his head up.

  Another early memory involves his sister Vicki.

  These two, Jamie and Vicki, had a fight. I was laying in bed in the front room in Ross Street, Northcote, a big house. They fell in my bedroom door fighting. So I got up and I belted him. I said: ‘Now you get up the street right now, and you buy her something, and you tell her you’re sorry.’ And he did, he went up and got her a bracelet. ‘Don’t ever let me see you hit your sister again,’ I said. I was brought up like that.

  By the age of twelve Jamie was an accomplished burglar, and by his early teens car theft was his passion. By now the family was living in Ross Street, Northcote, and local police estimated Jamie was stealing ten vehicles a week. By fourteen he was a runaway from Turana, and stayed briefly with Dennis, who was charged with harbouring him. During this period Jamie was regularly running away to South Australia in search of his father, Jimmy Pettingill.

  Armed robbery has always been regarded by Kathy and her underworld peers as a crime requiring ‘dash’. The theory goes like this: Anybody can break into an empty house, or sell a gram of heroin, but it takes a real man to stride into a bank, gun in hand. When you carry a gun you open a door to the unpredictable. It takes dash to remain cool enough to control the adrenalin flow at the height of the action.

  Jamie had the necessary dash at a remarkably early age—by the time he was fifteen he had been charged with four armed robberies. For these crimes he served time in an adult gaol by the time he was eighteen. During this sentence Kathy threatened to burn herself alive outside Pentridge if anything happened to him while being transferred from D Division to the notoriously violent high security H Division. ‘I know what Jamie can expect in H Division,’ she told the Melbourne Sun. ‘If it happens I will burn myself outside Pentridge. I want you to know what I feel, just in case something happens.’

  Dennis’s advice at the time was typically to the point. ‘Use kero, not petrol,’ he told Kathy. ‘The kero’ll work quicker.’

  The robbery where Jamie took the rap for Dennis happened around this time. On 5 March 1980, Jamie and Dennis burst into the bar of the United Kingdom Hotel in Clifton Hill. Dennis fired a shot at point blank range into the leg of part-time barman Albert Caulfield, fifty-nine, who died three days later in Queen Victoria Hospital. The Coroner found at the subsequent inquest that Caulfield died from a stroke caused by a moving blood clot, but declined to say whether or not the shooting contributed to his death. Dennis fled the scene and was never apprehended for the shooting. Jamie wasn’t so fortunate, but refused to give up his brother. It was some years before Kathy learnt the truth.

  One of the family let it slip. But I always remember Jamie saying to the Supreme Court judge: ‘I can’t tell you who it was, your honour, ‘cos it was a maniac.’ But he wouldn’t give him up, just like Victor did a five-year sentence for Peter, the only armed robbery on a bingo game. Peter did it and Victor got the blame. With Jamie, what sort of a brother would let a kid . . . Dennis knew he’d get a lighter sentence. I think Dennis thought the world of him.

  Jamie appeared before the Supreme Court on 16 February 1982, facing four charges dating back to 1980: armed robberies of the United Kingdom Hotel, a TAB branch/supermarket at Ascot Vale, and two separate incidents involving bus drivers at Collingwood. Mr Justice King sentenced Jamie to four years’ gaol, with a minimum
of three, causing an uproar within both the police force and the Attorney General’s Department. Both were appalled at the lightness of the sentence. Tom Rippon, secretary of the Police Association, commented: ‘I don’t think that punishment reflects anywhere near what the public would expect to be handed out in this instance.’ The AG’s Department sought advice on lodging an appeal.

  Dennis was ensconced in Richmond by the time Jamie was released from his sentence, and a job was waiting for him as stand-over man on bad debts. Jamie was good at it, too. In November 1984, when an undercover policeman attempted to score heroin at the parlour at 108 Stephenson, Jamie punched him and then drew a knife, sending the policeman fleeing for his life. Jamie was duly charged with assault.

  But all the heroin proved too much of a temptation. Jamie had been introduced to the drug in gaol, but there were virtually unlimited quantities available in Richmond. He was, however, a comparative rarity—a user with such an aversion for needles he was too squeamish to inject himself. Jamie used to look the other way when a friend, or whoever else was handy, jabbed a needle into his arm. That’s why Kathy was so shocked in late March 1985, two months before his death, when Jamie overdosed the first time.

  Now I’d had an episode in Dennis’s house at number 37 where some girl had locked the door and Jamie was nearly dead on the floor from an OD. And she was sitting there. So I called Wayne the builder. He come running up, and called the ambulance and everything. I’m trying to kill the girl because I thought Jamie was dead, and the ambulance brought him back. He came alive again.

  Jamie was kept overnight in Prince Henry’s Hospital on this occasion and was given psychiatric assessment. Less than two months after this near miss Jamie had recovered sufficiently to play a major part in the bombing of the Coroner’s Court. But the writing was on the wall. Five days after the bombing he was dead.