The Herald also reported that Milat was rushed to Goulburn Hospital, where ‘medical staff were unable to say whether the severed finger, which had been placed on ice, could be saved.’
The newspaper never reported whether or not the finger was reattached.
‘We were told he hardly said a word when he went to the hospital,’ said an officer. ‘The blokes that were there told us he had a bit of a smirk on his face because, despite the pain, he was Ivan Milat. It was an ego thing. The nurses immediately knew who he was and he got off on it. That’s why he did shit like this.’
But did they save the finger?
‘They didn’t,’ the guard said. ‘They never even bothered. Why would they? It was on ice and all that, but there was no attempt. Who would want to save Ivan Milat?’
Kevin Camberwell claimed Milat chopped off his digit in a bloody bid to escape: ‘He knew it was never going to get past security. All the mail coming in and out of there is screened. Of course it was found – and that is what he would have wanted. He would have been hoping he could escape while on escort to hospital.’
That was never going to happen, not with four armed, high-risk escorts transferring him to Goulburn Hospital.
‘He was always faking injuries to try to get out of the High-Risk Management Correctional Centre,’ said former Goulburn supervisor Dave Farrell. ‘He reckoned the air-conditioning was playing up. He would claim it was poisoned and point to his head. It would be all red because he had stood rubbing it on the wall for half a day. He would say he was getting rashes and needed to move out. He would try anything and everything to get himself out. He was a serial pest.’
Another guard, who worked closely with Milat, said the finger-severing stunt was purely for attention and had nothing to do with an impossible escape attempt.
‘It goes to show he is not completely insane because he buzzed up,’ said the Supermax officer. ‘That means he pressed the knock-up system [a prison intercom used by the inmates in case of emergency] to alert the officer in the control room that he was hurt. They alerted the security units and they went in to help him. He was found before the letter. It was all for attention. He just wanted to have a break from the normal routine and go and look into the eyes of the public when they recognised who he was.’
Camberwell said that experts had predicted Milat would hurt himself.
‘The psychiatrist warned us that he would eventually start mutilating because he couldn’t kill anyone,’ he said. ‘He killed because he was addicted to harm and mutilation, and they said he would need to fulfil that urge. In prison, in almost exclusive segregation, the only way he could do that was by hurting himself. And that is exactly what he did. He started with hunger strikes and then progressed.’
Ivan Milat is just one of the inmates held in the 75-cell prison within a prison they call Supermax.
Let’s meet some more …
Secret Supermax Files
These are the secret files and untold stories of the Supermax Six – the first men to be sent to Goulburn’s High-Risk Management Correctional Centre. The revealing case notes provide a fascinating insight into some of Australia’s worst and most violent criminals. For instance, did you know that aliens regularly visit the cell of mass murderer Malcolm Baker? Did you know about serial killer Lindsay Rose’s passion for prison gardening?
BAKER, Malcolm, DOB: 13/08/1947, received into the HRMCC on September 22, 2001
Extreme High Security: Classification A1.
Baker is currently serving six life sentences for murdering six people on the Central Coast in a 1992 shooting spree. Called the Central Coast Massacre, Baker shot dead his former girlfriend, her father, her pregnant sister and three others in a rampage across Terrigal, Bateau Bay and Wyong before surrendering to police.
‘Selected as part of the first group to be placed in HRMCC’, his Supermax file reads. ‘High risk of conspiracy to assault, escape and hostage-taking. Paranoid and aggressive manner. Obsessed with subject of space and science, frequently referring to visitors from space. Lack of insight into own behaviour. Staff monitor him closely.’
‘You won’t get me!’ screamed Baker, shaking his finger as he looked towards the sky. ‘You won’t fucking get me, and you can’t make me do anything. You can’t make me do nothing. NOT ME!’
His finger stopped pointing at the sky and started pointing towards his head.
‘Ha, ha,’ he said, now touching the crunched aluminum foil that he had fashioned into a hat – well, more of a helmet – and slapped onto his head. ‘See? I’m too smart. Ha, HA. See? You won’t fucking get me.’
This is how one of Australia’s worst killers spends his days, walking around a segregated Supermax yard yelling at the sky.
‘The meals in Supermax are served in little silver containers, a bit like those plastic containers you get Chinese in, but these are made with foil. He saves them up and scrunches them together and makes himself a little space helmet,’ said a HRMCC officer. ‘Like one of those things you would see in an old low-budget black-and-white space movie.’
The convicted killer of six tells Goulburn guards he is visited by aliens. They come into his cell at night. But the aliens aren’t so bad – he has bigger problems than green men with big heads.
‘He thinks people are trying to send him brain messages,’ the officer continued. ‘He swears that people are trying to control his mind, and he thinks they are doing it through the air-conditioning. Apparently [the Department of Corrective Services], the police force and the government are all out to get him. They have combined forces and put some type of microwave-based technology in the air-conditioning system. He says it is fucking with his brain, that they are trying to make him go crazy, so he wears the foil cap to stop the mind-control messages getting through.’
The foil might make him safe from the secret forces of the government. But not from other inmates …
SNAP!
The boot broke Baker’s bone.
Snap. Snap.
Two more ribs cracked as the frothing inmate stomped on Baker’s chest. The foil hat had fallen off after the first blow – a straight right that knocked him from his feet and flat onto his back.
The officers ran into the library and jumped on Martin Toki, another convicted murderer, who, according to his file, is a ‘mentally unstable inmate prone to frequent and violent mood swings’.
The giant of a man, ‘currently a Muslim but changes regularly between Buddhism and Christianity’, threw one officer to the ground before he was swamped. He screamed and shouted as he was dragged to the floor, but Baker was silent – knocked out cold and lying in a pool of hurt.
‘[Baker] was a nut case and was rarely allowed associations,’ said a HRMCC officer. ‘But, like any inmate, he did get associations from time to time. He only ever had one or two, and for some reason one of them was the extremely violent and unstable inmate called Toki.
‘Baker lives in a one-out cell – they all do – but they have a common area connected to their cell that they can share with associates. On this day he was in the library.’
And that’s where he was attacked, Toki’s hands dropping hardcovers and forming rock-hard fists.
‘He got bashed real bad,’ the officer continued. ‘I guess it was at the end of 2013. And when I say real bad, I mean real, real bad. Baker had severe injuries and was rushed to hospital. He had broken ribs, a smashed nose, cracked cheeks – and that’s just the start of it. He was so bad that they couldn’t treat him at Goulburn and he was rushed to Sydney for emergency treatment.’
The extent of the injuries came as no surprise, given that the attacker was a maniac who threatens to kill prison guards.
‘Toki is a bad man,’ the officer continued. ‘He is one of the most violent inmates in the prison system. A lot of people don’t realise but you get your real well-known inmates, guys like Milat, and really they are nothing more than a reputation. It’s the inmates that you have never heard of that are the real bad
ones, and Toki is one of them.
‘Yep, this guy can rip TVs from walls and swing them around like King Kong. He held a TV over his head and threatened to smash it over a guard’s head. They had to gas him and knock him over to stop him. That was in about 2008. He was a real problem because he was a big, strong Islander and hard to control. He was real dangerous and unpredictable. Over a period of time he behaved, and they signed off on an association. For whatever reason, he had an association with Baker.’
‘Baker said something to piss him off,’ the officer continued. (Maybe Toki didn’t believe in aliens?) ‘We don’t know what it was, but it was enough to get him flogged. We got in there just quick enough to save his life.’
The officer said Baker has been ‘quiet’ since the incident. He still wears the foil, of course, but now he yells to the sky softly and refuses association requests.
FERNANDO, Vester, DOB: 05/04/1970, received into the HRMCC on September 14, 2001
Extreme High Security: Classification A1.
Fernando was sentenced to life for the rape and murder of Walgett nurse Sandra Hoare in 1994. He was sentenced to another 30 years in the stabbing death of Brendan Fernando, his cousin and accomplice in Hoare’s murder, in Lithgow Jail in 1999.
‘Lengthy history of violence both in community and custody,’ his file states. ‘Continues to be compliant with unit routine and polite to staff. Was recently involved in an argument with another inmate on the deck, but this appears to have been settled. Continues to receive positive feedback regarding his laundry sweeper duties. Very loyal to his family and keeps in contact with them through the phone. Extremely loyal to inmate Priestly.’
Fernando is almost your model Supermax inmate … Almost.
‘He doesn’t do much wrong, but we found a big, dirty shiv in his cell one day,’ said a HRMCC officer. ‘He is a huge man with a history of violence, and he could have done a lot of damage with the weapon he had made. He was a handful back in his day but he’d really calmed down, and he was never angry unless it came to Muslims. He was one of the blokes who had converted to Islam, but for whatever reason he converted back.
‘He just hates them now, and he had the shiv ready because he was paranoid the Muslims were out to get him. Let’s just say he is very anti-Muslim, and only a potential problem to them.’
KANAAN, Michael, DOB: 23/05/1975, received into the HRMCC October 31, 2001
Extreme High Security: Classification A1.
Kanaan is serving three life sentences plus 50 years and four months without the possibility of parole for murdering three people in 1998. A university student aspiring to join the Australian Federal Police, Kanaan instead joined a brutal street gang led by Kings Cross drug dealer Danny Karam. He shot a man twice at Greenacre after a dispute over a gun in 1998 before murdering Karam two months later; the leader of ‘DK’s Boys’ was hit by 16 bullets as he sat in his parked car. Kanaan was arrested in December 1998 after being shot two times in a Sydney shoot-out with police. He was also convicted of shooting two men dead in a drive-by at Five Dock, linked to the murder of 14-year-old Edward Lee and suspected of shooting up a police station.
‘Received from ICMU on commissioning of the HRMCC,’ his file said. ‘Claimed to be a paraplegic during remand period. He has a capacity to mount an escape and has used a mobile phone whilst in jail. Noted as compliant with unit routine and polite in his interactions with staff. Kanaan rarely has contact with his counsellor as he states he is always busy training, which is his main interest now. Low-need inmate.’
It was a miracle …
‘He just stood up and walked,’ said a former prison guard. ‘He rose from the wheelchair, pushed it away, and he was cured.’
Michael Kanaan – a gangster, a killer and a cop-shooting drug dealer – had been touched by the hand of God. Rendered a self-diagnosed paraplegic after going down in a hail of bullets in an infamous Sydney shoot-out with police at White City in 1998, Kanaan simply pushed his wheelchair away and walked.
‘Yep, right after his trial finished,’ the officer said. ‘And after he knew he was safe in prison from being raped or bashed by other inmates.’
Some people even felt sorry for the master manipulator, whose ambition saw him attempt to seize control of the Kings Cross drug trade when he was just five years out of school. But didn’t he go to that good Christian school? Wasn’t he going to go to university? Doesn’t he have that nice family?
That’s what some thought, and maybe still think.
‘Kanaan is as dangerous as he’s ever been,’ said a current Goulburn officer. ‘He has heaps of dramas and is a bloke who will just snap. He hasn’t been in a wheelchair since he was in remand – I have never seen him in a wheelchair at all. It was just a play for sympathy from the court and to stay away from the heavies when he came in, until he had it all figured out.’
Kanaan is no cripple.
‘He is a fitness fanatic,’ the guard said. ‘He spends most of his time working out, whether out in the yard or in the cell. There are no free weights or anything like that in Supermax, but there is a chin-up bar and a dip bar.’
Up down, up down.
That’s how Kanaan spends his days. Chin-ups and dips outside, push-ups and sit-ups in his cell.
Up down, up down.
‘He has the strongest back I’ve seen,’ said the guard. ‘It is massive. He is a strong little fucker. He has thrown a few guards off that fucking back, let me tell you.’
Have you heard the one about the triple homicide convict being allowed out of Australia’s most secure prison for a consultation with a plastic surgeon? The inmate who sat in the high-profile Sydney hospital wanting the scars left by police-issue bullets to be removed?
No? Well, read on.
‘[Kanaan] is pretty vain,’ the officer continued. ‘And for some reason we can’t work out what genius decided they would let him go and get some plastic surgery. This wasn’t anything to do with his health. It was purely cosmetic because he thought the scars were ugly. Thankfully, the department was not going to pay for it. He had the money to get it done himself, and he was taken down to Sydney to have the surgery.’
Unfortunately, the world-renowned surgeon had bad news, and, apparently, Kanaan does not like bad news …
‘He was told nothing could be done about the scars because of some skin condition or something,’ the officer said. ‘So he exploded and tried to belt the doctor, and he would have had he not been restrained by the guards that were escorting him.’
Kanaan’s case notes, however, are complimentary. He is described as a polite and obedient inmate.
‘He is fine until he gets the wrong answer,’ the officer said. ‘And that’s when he snaps. He can be massive trouble. He is fine if he gets his visits, his calls and his associations, but you have a big problem if you tell him no. He tries to be smart and cunning, but we have a handle on him. We’ve seen him at his worst, and we know exactly how to deal with him. But he is a dangerous inmate. He has access to a lot of money and is still connected both inside and out. There’s a reason he’s in Supermax and a reason why he will never get out.’
PUAFISI, Fisatina, DOB: 22/09/1972, received into the HRMCC on September 15, 2001
Extreme High Security: Classification E1
A Supermax original, Puafisi was released in 2006 after serving a sentence for maliciously inflicting grievous bodily harm and assaulting an officer.
‘Left HRMCC to freedom on 07/02/06 and ten months later returned to custody after stabbing a security guard 30 times,’ his file reads. ‘Diagnosed with mental illness and adjustment dependent on medication compliance. Known to go off medication and to descend into violence.’
The security guard was busting. Too much water and too many people had him knocking down doors and ripping at his zipper – it was almost Christmas and Campbelltown Mall was packed.
‘Ahhhh,’ he sighed in relief. ‘Finally.’
The 38-year-old guard had asked for his toilet break f
our times.
‘Nup,’ the reply came. ‘Too busy. It’s Christmas. You can wait.’
But he was busting.
‘Okay,’ the boss said. ‘Be quick.’
But he never came back …
Pop. Pop. Pop.
He sprayed the wall with piss as he spun around.
Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop.
He swung but it was too late – the ten-centimetre paring knife had already ripped him apart.
‘From our information, the security guard was just using the toilet,’ recalled Campbelltown police inspector Michael Cook. ‘There was no verbal exchange at all. Absolutely none. It was just one of those crazy things. [Puafisi] punctured a lung and stabbed him in the heart. No provocation. No demands. Very strange.’
The toilet was packed with men dragged to the mall by their Christmas-shopping better halves, so there were several witnesses to the attack.
‘It is just as well we got him,’ the inspector said. ‘He is a very dangerous man.’
The bloodied guard was rushed to Liverpool Hospital for emergency surgery on his 30 wounds. He lived, thankfully, but only because Puafisi shoplifted an easily pocketed paring knife instead of something bigger.
Police were tipped off – a big bloke was running around covered in blood and issuing threats. The 34-year-old suspect was soon arrested at a scrubland campsite in nearby Ruse. The inspector brought up his file once he had him cuffed and calm, quietly curled up in a cell.
And then it all made sense.
‘He had just been let out of Supermax,’ recalled a current HRMCC officer. ‘In fact, he is the only guy I know of that has ever been released from the HRMCC – and boy was that a mistake. He was out for a while, but it was only a matter of time. Mad Eyes, that’s what we call him, had stolen something and he got paranoid. He thought a security guard was looking at him. So he went and stole a knife and watched the guard. He stalked him for a while, and then he got his chance when [the guard] left to go to the toilet. Pua just followed him in and stabbed the shit out of him.’
Australia's Most Murderous Prison: Behind the Walls of Goulburn Jail Page 9
