A Tale of Two Cities (31 page)

If he thought he might relax at the wheel of his leased Porsche coupe, he was wrong. At the South Yarra end of the South Eastern Freeway he ran into the back of a Peugeot sedan. The Porsche was left with a smashed left headlight and some panel damage. The Peugeot driver exchanged names and addresses with Wilson, who ‘apologised several times over the accident' but appeared ‘quite calm and not agitated.'

Perhaps he just had bigger problems to worry about than a broken headlight.

Around 9.30pm he stopped at a milk bar at Pakenham to buy a can of soft drink. About twenty minutes later, just up the highway, a man saw a white Porsche pulled over on the side of the road next to a bright yellow car.

The local panel beater knew Wilson's car and was surprised to see it turn down a dead end before the normal turn off. He also thought the driver was hesitant as if he didn't know where the highway narrowed. This also surprised him because Wilson had lived in the area for years. In other words, it seemed unlikely Wilson was driving the Porsche. And whoever was driving it was almost certainly the last to see him alive.

Wilson didn't make it the few extra kilometres to his home at the Clements Jersey Stud that night. Deidre Wilson reported him missing and the car was recovered at Melbourne Airport.

Eventually Clarkson, Kevin Williams and Chris and Kath Flannery were implicated but it was always going to be a tough case to prove. At the time there had never been a successful prosecution in Victoria in a case where no body had been found. Today, through credit card transactions, Medicare movements, mobile phone records, and closed circuit security footage, most people leave an electronic footprint but back then it was plausible to suggest a victim had faked a crime and staged a disappearance.

The jury had to decide first if there had been a murder before examining who might have done it.

At least two witnesses came forward to say they had seen Wilson after he was reported missing. While the Crown had no doubts, the lack of a body and the loss of a key witness fatally wounded the case.

THE life of Kevin John Henry ‘Weary' Williams' would have put Sigmund Freud into therapy.

While still living with his wife in Fitzroy, he was taken with his son's pretty and naïve girlfriend, Debra Boundy. So taken that he just took her. It would have made family dinners a touch frosty.

It was two days after her eighteenth birthday. He was 39 and a career criminal. She was unemployed and lived up the road with her parents. It was love at first fondle.

For a few weeks the couple moved from one cheap motel to another. The routine was broken when they agreed to baby-sit for friends of Williams – the Flannerys.

Eventually it was thought better for business if they moved in for a few days with the Flannerys at their home in the bayside suburb of Aspendale, as the men had a job to do together. Debra had no idea what that business was.

It would have been better if she had remained in the dark – in Flannery's social circles a little knowledge could be a fatal thing.

For the first few days she was treated as a guest rather than a friend but eventually (she later said) Flannery told her: ‘I'm sick and tired of talking in riddles in front of you. We are going to kill someone and we are trying to work out some way to stop him.'

Welcome to the family.

Debra Boundy said she didn't want to know, telling Flannery her boyfriend ‘didn't want me to have any part of it.'

So why was Flannery so forthright? Perhaps he wanted to implicate her so she could never be used as an innocent witness. Or maybe he thought that if she became a problem he would just make her disappear. Or perhaps he was just an idiot.

Flannery was full of ideas – some good, some not so good.

The gunmen carried out surveillance on their ‘mark' and followed him to his home. A witness later saying he saw Flannery on the property.

The team, so the police claimed, had already dug the bush grave where they would bury their victim with nearly 50 kilos of lime.

They had taken the contract on the basis the body would never be found so a shoot and run scheme would never work.

An ambush would be the best plan. But how?

Because he drove a Porsche, Wilson could speed away from them if he became suspicious. If they grabbed him at home or at work there would be witnesses. So they needed to make him stop voluntarily on the road.

Later, after Debra Boundy was fleetingly persuaded to become a prosecution witness, she claimed (in a statement tendered to the Coroners Court) that a few days before Wilson went missing she was surprised to see a woman close to Flannery dressed to kill – perhaps literally.

Wearing an apricot dress with a plunging neckline and a crucifix around her neck, she looked like a woman on a mission. ‘The material was very light and feminine, like chiffon, and clung to her body.' She wore stiletto heels and make-up, Boundy said.

‘It was very dressy for day wear.'

According to Boundy, whose version of events was never tested in open court, the plan was for the woman to raise the bonnet of her car and try to flag Wilson down to help her. Chris thought it would work.

But she said the woman was concerned that Wilson might recognise her because she had met him once when working for Clarkson.

In any case, it didn't matter because it didn't work: Wilson had ignored the damsel-in-distress routine and driven straight past.

Boundy later told police the men rented a canary yellow Ford Falcon – the same type used at the time by traffic police. Homicide detectives would say Williams hired the car from Avis using the false name Marshman the day before the killing and returned it the day after, having travelled 966 kilometres. When Williams
was arrested months later, he still had the licence under the name Marshman.

Boundy said that on Friday 1 February she watched Flannery sit at the dining room table and make a fake police sign with white letters on a blue background.

(Much later homicide squad detective Paul Sheridan would make up a similar sign. When he walked into court Williams said to Flannery, ‘Fuck, they've got the sign.' The comment could not be put to the jury.)

On the night of the hit, the two dressed like detectives. Flannery was a snappy dresser so it was unusual to see him wearing a plain suit and a nondescript tie. Williams was also dressed as if for one of his many court appearances.

Boundy saw Flannery take a revolver from his jacket and take it with him when they left about midday.

‘The only comment I can recall Kathy making was it would be a long day for them.'

It was a long day and a longer night because they weren't back until the following morning. They cleaned the car then Flannery had breakfast, showered and went to bed while Williams ‘didn't look too good and went to the toilet.'

Boundy said she and Williams left to move into the Flag Inn at Frankston. ‘On the way to the motel Kevin said to me, “He's dead. We pulled him over and when he got out of the car Wilson said, ‘It's my unlucky day. I've got pulled over before'.” (He was probably referring to the earlier car accident on the South Eastern Freeway).

Williams told Boundy that Flannery handcuffed Wilson and put him in the fake police car. He said they later dumped Wilson's car at the airport.

Later that day Boundy says Williams met Flannery and returned with $4000 wrapped in a rubber band.

‘We stayed at the motel that night and while we were there Kevin told me that Chris shot him (Wilson) in the head and that he ran away and that Chris chased him and caught him. Wilson had run into a fence. They brought him back and there were six or seven bullets put into him. Kevin said that he was dead and they buried him in a hole.

‘On Saturday night we bought a pizza for tea.' Details of the pizza toppings were unavailable at the time of going to print.

Two nights later they were at the Flannerys' watching the Channel Ten news when the story broke that Wilson was missing and that police had found his car. Flannery just said, ‘I didn't expect it to be on TV so early.'

Kathy then instructed the couple to head interstate.

They met the Flannerys at Surfers Paradise and while sitting in their room Flannery said, ‘Things are happening too fast. I hope they don't find him for a couple of years.'

Chris and Kath went back to Melbourne and Williams took a call from one of them. ‘When he came back into the room he was most upset.'

They went for a drive and at first Williams wouldn't talk to her but finally revealed that Flannery wanted her dead ‘because I knew too much.'

As instructed, Williams rang Flannery the next day to report in that Boundy had been killed. ‘Kevin told me that the hardest thing he had to do was keep me out of sight.'

But the suspicious Flannery didn't believe Williams. Within days the couple started to get threatening letters and their car was sprayed with the words, ‘Just Married', and ‘Dog.' A neighbour told her there was a suspicious car parked in the street. It was mauve with a white vinyl roof – the same type as Flannery's.

It was time to make tracks without leaving any. They went bush where they thought they would be out of Rentakill's reach.

Walter Willgoss was a drifter and a mate of Williams who would eventually travel with the couple, although Boundy barely tolerated him, believing he was just a sleazy old man.

Willgoss later told police that in January, Williams turned up at his house to show off his young girlfriend and to brag he was about to pull a job that would ‘make the papers.'

But he said the next time he saw his old mate Williams had lost his swagger. He said Flannery intended to kill Boundy because, ‘Debbie knew too much.'

The three left Melbourne in two cars and camped by the Delatite River for a week before pushing on. During their trip Willgoss said Williams was crooked on Flannery and believed he had not been paid enough for the job. He believed his share should have been $25,000 and he had got only $10,000. ‘He said Flannery was trying to lash him.

‘Kevin said it was quite funny how it happened. Everything had gone wrong.

‘He said we took him up to where the hole was and Flannery shot Wilson in the head and Wilson said, “What's going on?” and started to run. He said that they had previously handcuffed him behind his back and when Wilson was running across the paddock with Kevin and Flannery chasing him that Kevin twisted his leg and his cartilage slipped out. It was his left leg. He said that Wilson ran into the fence and bounced back and fell down and they jumped on him and grappled with him. He said Flannery went mad and emptied his gun into him.'

When Flannery arrived home after Wilson was killed, the observant Boundy noticed Flannery had a small three-cornered tear in the left leg of his pants half way up the thigh. Could he have caught his leg in the barbed wire fence while he wrestled with Wilson and is that why Flannery ‘went mad'?

Or perhaps he was a little mad to begin with.

A police surgeon later examined Williams and found he had cartilage damage to his left knee.

Willgoss said Williams told him they had followed Wilson a few times to know the route he took home and eventually pulled him over with the hand-made police sign.

‘He said they made him put his hands on the roof and then handcuffed him. Wilson said, “Take my car and take my money but don't hurt me”.

‘Kevin told me that he had told Flannery that he (Kevin) had killed Debbie. He said that this was to keep Flannery off his back. He said that he was worried about Flannery knocking both of them. This was one of the reasons that we have been more or less on the run for the last four and a half months.'

It all ended when the three were arrested in outback New South Wales near Bourke in July. A passer by noticed a camper with a pistol and told the police. When asked his name, Williams responded with characteristic stupidity: ‘Chris Flannery.'

It would be like Lord Lucan trying to pass himself off as Elvis.

Police believe the arrest might have saved Williams' worthless life. They believe Flannery was about to head off to try and find the couple to kill them both. Police in Melbourne acting on the information that ‘Flannery' had been arrested interstate rang notorious private detective Tom Ericksen to tell him ‘his boy' Flannery was in custody.

Ericksen had been meddling in the case, running a defence for Flannery, including spreading stories that Wilson was still alive. Ericksen immediately rang Flannery and quickly confirmed he was still free – and that whoever had been arrested at Bourke was not him. The pair immediately realised that the man in custody must be Williams and this meant Debra Boundy would be under pressure to talk to the police.

Flannery abandoned plans (at least in the short term) to get at Williams and Boundy and moved onto a macabre Plan B: moving Wilson's body. According to Clarkson's driver and bodyguard, George Marcus, Clarkson said: ‘Chris had to go and shift the body. He was as sick as a fucking dog.'

Marcus said Clarkson ‘went on to say that now Chris was the only one who knew where the body was.'

The bodyguard said that when he heard Flannery felt he was owed money Clarkson responded, ‘Fucking Chris shouldn't be complaining: he got well over $35,000 from me … over the job on Wilson.'

The witness said Clarkson claimed the body was buried with lime and would disappear in nine months.

The man chose to continue to work for questionable characters and was shot dead in a gangland-related shooting in 1997.

Willgoss told police Flannery gave Williams a book for some on-the-job training. ‘Flannery wanted it back as it was his bible. It was a pathology book mainly on gunshot wounds. It had pictures in it showing the type of bullets and shells from shotguns and other firearms and what the effect of each of them was from a particular distance. Flannery gave it to him to read. I had a look at a couple of pages but couldn't stomach it.'