The Matriarch

by Adrian Tame

  If the above represents an objective account of how the events of Walsh Street unfolded over a period of two and a half years, what follows is Kathy’s view of proceedings, based on her unshakable conviction that police decided immediately after the murders that the family was responsible, and set about making the facts fit the theory.

  Firstly Kathy believes—and it was alleged at the trial—that when Graeme Jensen was killed on 11 October 1988, he was shot in mistake for Victor. Victor and Jensen had been under surveillance for some time before the shooting, and had been filmed together. Evidence was given that two days before Jensen’s death Victor was warned by a woman named Penny Rountree that the police were gunning for him. She was the wife of Lindsay Rountree, who testified that Victor had approached him with the ‘kill two cops for one of ours’ proposition. Rountree had been arrested by the armed robbery squad at Euroa on 6 October, and claimed they told him they were going to kill Victor. Police later denied this, but Rountree passed the alleged threat onto his wife with instructions to inform Victor. Peter McEvoy told the committal: ‘. . . Victor had learnt that there was a squad of police gunning for him, and that they intended to kill him on sight when they found him.’ Anthony Farrell similarly claimed: ‘Well, Victor was in fear of his life and what I believed to be murder by certain members of the police force.’ Farrell said he had difficulty understanding why police had refused to see Victor on the first occasion he tried to give himself up and ‘next thing you know you’ve got a gang of police running in his house looking for him. At that stage I came to the conclusion that the police were out to murder Victor Peirce.’

  Sandra Faure, the woman with whom Jensen was living at the time of his death, claimed that when she was taken by police to the scene of the shooting a policewoman asked her: ‘Are you Wendy?’ She believed this was a reference to Victor’s wife, Wendy, and indicated that the policewoman believed it was Victor who had been shot. When Sandra’s fourteen-year-old daughter approached the scene, wanting to see her ‘Daddy’, an officer allegedly told her: ‘Well, he’s fucking dead, fuck off. There’s nothing to see, fuck off.’ This came from Peter McEvoy, describing the shooting during a secretly taped conversation on 15 January 1989. He said: ‘Drivin’ down the fuckin’ shop and they’ve just fucken pounced on him. (Jensen) ambushed him . . . Went straight into his fuckin’ head in the side. That side there, just above his ear, came out the front, straight out his forehead, pulled the fucken part of his fucken skull out, mate. Size of a fucken cigarette packet in his forehead.’

  Kathy’s opinion of Jensen, who first became known to the family through his close relationship with Jamie, contrasts strongly with that of police, who regarded him as a vicious career criminal with a long record of convictions for violence and dishonesty.

  I knew Graeme Jensen very well. He was beautiful, he was gentle, he was kind. Very quiet, amiable, I never heard him swear. I knew him through Victor. Known him a few years. I met him regularly at 86 Chestnut when Victor was there. I was talking with Graeme in the lounge one time, and next minute Victor’s thrown a penny banger in, and there’s Graeme, he’s hit the roof, scared stiff. Victor says: ‘How rude you are. You talk to me Mum, but you won’t come out here and talk to me and me wife.’ But Graeme didn’t like her. And Graeme hated me bloody scones. I was going to put one in his coffin, but I didn’t. We were filmed at the funeral, me and Vicki.

  I invited him down to Venus Bay but he didn’t come. It was a couple of months before he was shot. He didn’t get the chance, did he? We went down to the funeral parlour in Boundary Road, and Peter McEvoy was keeping watch over him. I put a flower in Graeme’s coffin, and when we got to the church I looked around and I thought: ‘Which one of you boys is next?’ I thought: ‘Jedd Houghton’s next’ and I knew Gary Abdallah was going to be murdered. He was a friend of Trevor’s. The rumour on the street was that he was going to be murdered.

  Within twelve hours of the murders of Tynan and Eyre on 12 October the homes of two of Kathy’s children, Victor and Vicki, were raided. What information had police received during this twelve-hour period suggesting the family were the most likely culprits?I Or were they acting on an educated guess, as Kathy thinks, that her sons must have been to blame? This theory, she believes, became the driving force behind all subsequent actions of the taskforce.

  An insight into how quickly police connected the murders of their two colleagues with the shooting of Graeme Jensen came from a Mr W.J. Wesson, whose flat, close to the murder scene, was used by police as temporary headquarters immediately afterwards. Mr Wesson said he heard officers in his loungeroom making the connection with Jensen’s death between one and two hours after the murders. But Detective Senior Constable Col Ryan said at the committal that the idea to raid Victor’s home at Chestnut Street, hours after the double murder, came from Chief Inspector Brendon Cole, who had received information connecting Jensen’s death with the Walsh Street shootings.

  Only hours before the raids, down at Venus Bay, Kathy was listening to the early morning radio. The murder of the two young police officers came as a complete shock:

  I heard on the morning news two policemen had been shot in Walsh Street, and I thought: ‘What a dreadful thing.’ Not thinking anything else, just how terrible. I didn’t see no connection with Graeme. I hadn’t heard about that two for one. I was doing the dishes that night and Derryn Hinch said to a police officer he was interviewing: ‘Do you think it had anything to do with the Pettingill, Peirce, Allen family, as a payback for Graeme?’ I dropped the dishes.

  We got blamed for Dennis because they never got him for all the things he done. And Victor’s knowing of Graeme Jensen. I cried at the funeral of the two cops on TV. They should never have died.

  After the raids of Victor and Vicki’s houses I spoke to Victor on the phone, and said: ‘Victor, if they think it’s you, I want you out of that house.’ I was crying. Victor said: ‘Where will I go?’ Andrew Fraser and Charlie Nikakis [solicitors] took Victor to the police on 12 October but they wouldn’t see him.

  Jason gave Victor up for Hefti [the security guard slain in an armed robbery] because he was scared stiff. I was happy when Victor was arrested, because he was safe and sound in gaol, and I knew he couldn’t be shot.

  During the raid at Chestnut Street a shot was fired, the noise causing sufficient trauma to kill two pet budgies owned by Victor’s daughter, Katie, then aged three. On hearing of this Kathy immediately bought Katie replacement birds. Kathy alleges that the second time police raided Chestnut Street an officer spotted the two new arrivals and wrung their necks in front of Katie. Kathy made an official complaint, but got nowhere. If this incident is true, it indicates how hot police feelings were running at the time.

  On 13 October Kathy was approached by the Sun for a story which must have come dangerously close to libel. Amazingly, it began with the paragraph: ‘A woman connected with a group of criminals suspected of the South Yarra ambush killings last night denied any of them was involved.’ Kathy said: ‘I hate coppers, but those boys [Tynan and Eyre] didn’t do anything. Our family wouldn’t do that. We were not involved. You don’t kill two innocent coppers. If you want to get back, you would kill the copper who killed Graeme.’

  The following day the Sun ran a front-page story quoting unnamed police sources who claimed that associates of Jensen planned the murders at his wake, saying in part: ‘It could have been a spur of the moment thing,’ a senior policeman said yesterday. ‘They could have said: “They’ve killed one of ours, we’ll kill two of theirs.”’

  This apparent idle speculation, aired here in the Sun for the first time, was to become one of the cornerstones of the prosecution’s case.

  By 21 October Jason Ryan had been interviewed by police a number of times, and had allegedly been bashed. (In a conversation with the author Wendy Peirce described him as looking ‘like the Elephant Man’ after one alleged beating.) He had also started naming names. Kathy believes Jason’s weakness planted the seed in t
he minds of the taskforce that their best chance of securing convictions against the family was to attack and divide from within. Jason was the first in the bag (the witness protection scheme) and singing like a bird. The next targets were Wendy and Vicki. Pressure would need to be applied.

  Then, between 24 and 27 October, Jason was driven around the bush by police while they were awaiting a decision on his suitability for the witness protection scheme. Kathy alleges police broke one of Jason’s arms, smashed his teeth, fired shots over his head and held him upside down in a creek, threatening to drown him, during these four days. Vicki was not told of Jason’s whereabouts and at one stage actually made inquiries through missing persons. This was the start of pressure on her.

  On 1 November Anthony Farrell was charged with the murders, becoming the first of the four men who eventually stood trial. Jason had already been charged with the murders, but the charges were later dropped. At this time Anthony and Jason were still in their teens, and Jason had already demonstrated a propensity for opening his mouth to police in a crisis. This is one of the strongest points in Kathy’s argument. There is no dispute that her two sons, Trevor and Victor, were hardened and experienced career criminals. If they were contemplating the cold-blooded execution of two police officers, and the enormity of the consequences involved, would they take along a couple of inexperienced young boys, one of them already known for his lack of discretion? Or, as Peter McEvoy put it during an interview with Inspector Noonan: ‘Who would be fuckin’ stupid enough to do a job with Jason or Anthony, they’re only fuckin’ kids.’

  Pressure now mounted on Wendy with her arrest for illegal possession of a firearm, assault on police, and indecent language charges that resulted from the 1 November raid on Chestnut Street. This pressure intensified over the next two months. First she was charged with attempted murder following the pub brawl, leaving her in custody and separated from her children over Christmas. Then, a few days later, Victor became the third person accused of the killings. Finally there was the demolition of her home in Chestnut Street.

  In the meantime Jedd Houghton was shot by police in a Bendigo caravan park. Allegedly a bag was placed over the head of Houghton’s girlfriend during the raid, an action which was later justified as normal practice. A few days later Kathy made a gesture in response, pursuing a member of the taskforce down the street outside the court and handing him a folded paper bag.

  I found out the truth about the shooting in the caravan. What happened was Jedd and his girlfriend had a smoke. He was laying down with her and they shot him dead and then they put a paper bag over her head. So I go to court the day after the shooting, and I’ve got a folded up paper bag and I handed this to Colin McLaren [a member of the TyEyre taskforce, but not present at the shooting of Houghton] and I handed it to him, to let him know I knew. I chased him down the street to give it to him, and do you know where it is now? On the wall at St Kilda police station. Alison Niselle [joint producer of the ABC’s Janus series, which was loosely based on Kathy’s family] told me.

  Indirect confirmation of a paper bag being placed over the girl’s head came from Detective Inspector Noonan. Giving evidence before an inquiry into Houghton’s death in June 1990 he said: ‘Any person in a premises that is raided is bound and has a hood placed over their head . . . (the officers) are entitled to do that because of the briefing I gave them.’

  Kathy continues:

  I didn’t know Jedd Houghton that well. He seemed such a nice, fit young man. The heartache his mother’s been through. I didn’t know Gary Abdallah. Trevor did because his wife Debbie lived near him. The day Gary was shot I got a call from a journo on the Herald-Sun to say Trevor had been shot, but I knew Trevor was at the Children’s Hospital with one of the kids, so I knew it wasn’t him.

  She believes that it was in direct retaliation for her action with the paper bag that Trevor was kidnapped and bashed. Kathy claims that overhead streetlights where he was seized were removed immediately before the attack, and describes other tactics used during the kidnapping as similar to those employed by police during raids. It was for fear of further reprisals that she withdrew her original allegation that police were responsible.

  Some time early in the evening Trevor and Debbie got a call that they were going to be raided. She was heavily pregnant and he wanted to get her out. Whoever it was had taken all the streetlight bulbs out, and as they’ve walked out the door four men with shotguns came up.

  ‘Don’t move, don’t move, don’t move.’ They tied Trevor up with masking tape around his hands, left her and hustled him across Merri Creek, through a gap in the fence. They put him on the floor of a Commodore, he could tell it was that. They stabbed him, iron-barred him, sledge-hammered him. They left him for dead on the side of the road in Glenroy. He told me: ‘Mum, I heard the click of the gun. I knew it was going to be quick, and all I could think of was it’s going to be over soon.’ He managed to crawl across the road to a service station. He was on his way to the operating theatre and his thumb was hanging off, and he was crying. And he said: ‘Mum, I’m not crying because I’m hurting. I’m crying because I’m so glad to see you.’

  He’s fucked for life. The spine and that, the stab wounds. The arthritis and everything. He’s thirty years of age. It was cops. Who else would take the lights off the street? I changed the story to say it wasn’t them to get them off my back. If I hadn’t said that, they were going to do something else. I asked the cops for their running sheet [record of activities] for that night, but they wouldn’t give it to me.

  After a relative lull over the next few months, in April 1989 Gary Abdallah went down in a hail of police bullets in his Carlton flat, becoming, after Jedd Houghton, the second suspect named by Jason to be shot.

  In the following weeks Inspector Noonan spoke to Peter McEvoy on a number of occasions, leading to McEvoy’s appearance on television expressing concern. Thus the pressure continued on Vicki—McEvoy was an old friend and tenant of her flat.

  Like Jason and Farrell, McEvoy was charged with the murders, shortly after his television appearance. Victor’s charges were to follow a month later.

  Anthony [Farrell] was just a young lout, a bit weak, not capable of killing two cops. Macca [McEvoy] I’d known a long time, and he’d come down to Venus Bay with Vicki. All I know of Macca is he’s a rapistII and they’ve not got that much dash. He’s out now after doing seven years for a robbery after Walsh Street, but we’ve not been in touch. There’s no need to. What have we got in common?

  On the night of the murders Victor had dinner at a friend’s. Victor was a vegetarian so she cooked it specially, the friend’s wife. And she booked the motel where Wendy and Victor and the three kids stayed. Victor loved Graeme Jensen, but Trevor couldn’t have given a fuck. When Vicki phoned Trevor to tell him about Graeme’s death he had taken a tablet, and he said: ‘I don’t give a fuck,’ and went back to sleep. Nothing interferes with Trevor’s sleep.

  Victor saw his daughter born and fainted. Trevor went ‘eerrgh’ when one of his kids was born. I can’t imagine them blowing anybody’s brains out. They’d be laying on the ground. They didn’t kill any of Dennis’s mates. Neither of them have the killer instinct like Dennis had.

  Even though there was widespread speculation that Trevor would be the fourth man to be charged with the murders, the move took Kathy by surprise.

  I didn’t expect Trevor to be charged. I went into St Paul’s Cathedral in town when I heard. I think the paper boy was yelling it out. I bought the paper and there’s Trevor, and I went into the church to say a prayer. Yeah, deep down I’m religious. I was crying and praying it wasn’t true. I phoned H Division at Pentridge and a screw said: ‘It’s been on the news for hours.’ He didn’t give a stuff. After the committal I said a prayer for them all at St Francis Church.

  The youngest of Kathy’s children, Trevor, had a long list of convictions going back to 1979 which included charges of burglary, conspiracy to commit robbery, escaping from custody, d
rug offences, and driving offences. He had first met Peter McEvoy in 1982 and formed a close friendship with him. Trevor moved to Richmond shortly before his nineteenth birthday and began living with Kathy at 106 Stephenson Street. After a year he moved out to live with a girlfriend and her family in the affluent suburb of Camberwell for the next two years. After Dennis’s death Trevor moved back to Richmond and began living alone at 37 Stephenson Street, evidently unconcerned with the house’s bloody history.

  Then, early in July, the taskforce played its final trump card with Wendy by showing her a set of love letters written by Victor to her best friend. Where the destruction of her home, separation from her children, and the gaoling of her husband had all failed, this finally succeeded in cracking Wendy.

  For different reasons Vicki too began to weaken and eventually gave way. According to Kathy, police had told her that Victor and later Trevor, despite being behind bars awaiting trial, were going to organise to have Jason killed rather than allow him to continue testifying against them. Kathy believes Vicki should have seen through this and stood by the family, knowing her brothers would not take such a step. It is quite likely police would have told Vicki of such a fictitious threat. Setting one criminal faction against another is a common tactic, and often bears fruit. Telling Jason the lie years before that his Uncle Trevor had implicated him in a burglary helped police secure a statement from Jason blaming Trevor, so why not try it again? Vicki confirmed the police threat, telling the committal on 17 November that she had taken an overdose of pills in a suicide attempt after a member of the TyEyre taskforce had told her she must choose between Jason and her family.

  By late July, ten months after the murders, pressure was also mounting on the taskforce, through Chief Magistrate John Dugan, to get the committal under way. The DPP declined to help the taskforce prepare its final brief, and Kathy believes this is when the squad should have realised its inquiries were heading in the wrong directions.