A Tale of Two Cities (41 page)

Police eventually concluded the two gunmen killed Sayers and then ran through a vacant block to Bronte Marine Drive, jumped into a dark coloured panel van and drove away.

Coincidently Tom Domican owned a Holden HQ panel van just like the one seen opposite Sayers' home. But while Tom was lucky with court appearances, (he was charged with one murder, one attempted murder and five counts of conspiracy to murder – and beat the lot), he was unlucky with cars.

On 28 January – the day after the attack on Flannery – Tom reported his car stolen. It was a Mazda – the same type alleged to have been used by the hit team in their failed attempt to kill the Melbourne gangster.

Now someone of Domican's status could not be expected to rely on public transport so on 29 January – the day after Tom's car went missing – someone bought a 1973 HQ Holden Panel
Van (GQD-603) from a motor auctions company for $2,850 cash, under the name of Kevin Ryan.

The murder taskforce was able to establish that Domican sold the same panel van to a policeman, just a day after the Sayers murder for the under-the-odds price of $400 (this was the value of a rifle Domican had received from the policeman).

The car was parked just a couple of streets from the murder scene in Jackman Street, Bondi and the helpful Tommy Domican produced the keys and drove the car to the policeman's house.

It was the same policeman who had attempted to provide information on Flannery to Domican just before the murder attempt on Rentakill.

The policeman was apparently unable or unwilling to see the obvious links. He was happy to do business with Tough Tom, even giving the notorious Sydney identity his address so he could drive the car to his house.

The experienced investigator didn't seem to wonder why someone like Domican would sell him the car for such a bargain basement price – at a massive discount of nearly 80 percent.

But in New South Wales some police just weren't that curious.

Later when the policeman realised the car may have been used in a murder, he helped conceal it. Despite this, and his questionable relationship with Domican, the taskforce remained sympathetic saying while the actions were ‘rather silly, they do not disclose any criminal offences.'

Others might disagree.

The taskforce effectively discounted the theory Sayers was killed over his many debts. The dealer may have owed money but he had shown time and again the capacity to make bucketloads of it. He was paying back Chubb and had previously paid gambling debts.

But once he was dead no-one was going to get paid.

The New South Wales police murder taskforce concluded, ‘Although heavily indebted to a number of persons, to have Sayers murdered would have been of little value, other than to exhibit to others the folly of not settling promptly … It is more feasible that Domican, being unable to locate Flannery, has identified Sayers as his ally and at the same time settled an old score. The evidence would tend to suggest that the Holden van recovered during the course of the investigation is the vehicle used in the murder. Should that be correct then there is evidence which places Domican and an associate in possession of that vehicle 12 hours after the killing.'

Certainly there was logic to support the police view that to kill Sayers over a debt would be self-defeating, as the debt would die with him. But whoever said drug dealers were logical?

In Sydney at the time the established underworld pecking order had collapsed. In January 1985 one of Sydney's most influential gangsters, Frederick Charles (Paddles) Anderson, had died of natural causes leaving a void many wanted to fill.

The new breed of drug dealers was challenging the men who had controlled illegal gambling for decades under the umbrella of police corruption.

Plus, Sayers had been charged with drug trafficking and if convicted he wouldn't be able to pay his debt. Maybe he would be better as a dead-set example of why it could be fatal to fall behind, than to leave him to a long prison term.

The New South Wales murder taskforce produced some impressive work. Its investigators concluded the killers were Tom Domican and his good mate, Roy Thurgar. But they lacked the evidence to lay charges.

It was one of the cases that could have gone no-where. The homicide squad couldn't create the breakthrough and then a second investigation by the murder taskforce couldn't press charges.

But there was another group of investigators who had moved into offices in Sydney. The National Crime Authority was a new agency, one with some of the powers of a Royal Commission. This was hardly surprising as it was born out of political necessity following the findings from two judicial inquiries. One was headed up by Melbourne QC Frank Costigan who looked into the crime-riddled Painters and Dockers Union. The second, by Justice Don Stewart into drug trafficking and the Nugan Hand merchant bank.

Both men were very different and ran their inquiries very differently. But they concluded that corruption, infighting and lack of powers left law enforcement with little chance of effectively investigating organised crime.

The National Crime Authority was an attempt to deal with the problems on a national basis using state and federal resources. Don Stewart was its first head and the National Crime Authority's initial chief investigator was the former head of the Melbourne homicide squad, Carl Mengler.

Mengler, whose warm personality and ready laugh concealed a determination to expose corruption, was tasked with reinvestigating the Sydney murders in an operation code named Curtains.

Senior Sydney police did not welcome the National Crime Authority investigation for several reasons. Firstly, no police force would want the new boys on the block to succeed where they had failed. And secondly, they knew if the full story were told the chronic corruption of New South Wales dirtiest could no longer be hidden in dark places.

Within the National Crime Authority was a carefully positioned New South Wales mole, who reported back on a daily basis to senior Sydney police on the progress of the supposedly secret operation.

In February 1986 Mengler told his team they had to go back to the beginning. He didn't want them just to read existing statements and pick holes in the grammar. He wanted them to get out of their air- conditioned offices and back on the streets. He told them they must treat the old crime scenes as active sites and imagine the murders had just been committed.

Some of the team assigned to look at the Sayers murder were not convinced, but Mengler made them an offer they couldn't refuse – get on with it or get out.

The National Crime Authority was seen as the law enforcement body of the future. It had coercive powers, bugging equipment and hand-picked investigators but it was old-fashioned policing and a ballpoint pen that would create the first breakthrough.

In August one National Crime Authority detective placed his pen in the bullet holes in the garage door of Sayers' house and then followed the invisible line back to the vacant block across the road.

Using simple garden tools, the police dug up two spent .223 WW Special cartridge cases. New South Wales police, using metal detectors, had previously searched the area but had drawn a blank.

Tests found the bullets were fired from a 5.56mm Colt selfloading assault rifle. The second breakthrough came when rifling marks on the cartridges were found to match a weapon seized a year earlier from the Hunter Valley property of major drug dealer, Barry McCann. The bullets also proved a match to the shots fired at Flannery in the failed murder attempt in January 1985.

McCann hated Flannery and was also a great mate of Domican.

Snap.

So why would McCann be involved?

McCann and Flannery fell out after a violent confrontation in the Lansdowne Hotel. There are several versions of what happened. Kath Flannery claims that during an argument, McCann's wife threatened to glass Flannery who responded with a short right to her jaw that left it swollen and badly bruised.

Another man produced a shotgun and the Flannerys decided to take their custom elsewhere.

They were banned from that day on from returning to the pub. This was hardly surprising, as it was owned by McCann.

Later Chris sent flowers as a form of apology. Who says chivalry is dead?

And, according to Kath, McCann had also crossed Sayers off his Christmas card list.

‘Michael Sayers was killed because he ripped off McCann for $250,000 worth of hash outside the Lansdowne Hotel in the boot of the car.'

Many colourful characters enjoyed the hotel. Bob Trimbole's son, Craig, provided the amusement machines in the bar and Aussie Bob was an occasional patron.

McCann was big and getting bigger. He was able to buy a 1000-hectare horse stud in the Hunter Valley for $450,000 cash.

One of McCann's team was to brag that he threw away his carpet underlay and replaced it with $100 notes – to conceal $3 million.

The boss was said to have kept up to $4 million in cash on his property.

So who ordered Sayers death? The National Crime Authority alleged that McCann and four others decided he had to die – ostensibly because he owed Barry $400,000.

But Sayers still had plenty and could have at least made a part payment, so it wasn't purely the money. McCann had plenty of that. It was a statement – a show of strength directed to old
school gangster and rival drug dealer Neddy Smith – that he was a force to be reckoned with.

One of the men eventually charged over the Sayers murder was former boxer turned gunman Ray Thurgar, although the case was thrown out by a magistrate due to lack of evidence.

By 1990 Thurgar had lost his strong silent image and had became chatty with the Independent Commission Against Corruption, whose investigators visited him inside Long Bay Jail at least four times.

In December 1990 he was released from prison declaring he would make a clean start by buying a small laundromat in Randwick. But in May 1991 he was gunned down outside his business in Alison Road.

In August 1991 Tom Domican, Victor John Camilleri, 31, and Kevin Victor Theobald, 32, were found not guilty of conspiring to murder Sayers.

One of the major sticking points was the use of a police informer and notorious liar as a key witness.

The evidence about the discovery of the bullets at the scene was also contested, with the defence asking why it took so long to find the key evidence.

The jury heard that National Crime Authority officers found the spent cartridge shells 18 months after Sayers was shot.

National Crime Authority Inspector Geoffery Schuberg, admitted he wasn't going to search, but his supervisor ordered it ‘in no uncertain terms' on 15 August 1986.

They then found the bullets within an hour.

When asked why he had not previously searched the area, Schuberg said, 'I'd accepted the search had been carried out at the start of the murder investigation. I honestly didn't believe anything would be found 18 months after the murder.'

The main target of Operation Curtains was Tom Domican and in October 1986 he was charged with the attempted murder of Flannery.

But the charges kept coming, including conspiring to murder Flannery and conspiring to murder his wife, Kath.

He was charged with the murder of Sayers, and three further murder conspiracy charges.

Many thought that he would be buried under the weight of charges but Domican, the former London bouncer, fought and fought.

Even when he was convicted of the attempted murder of Flannery and sentenced to 14 years he vowed to clear his name. One by one he was acquitted of the charges and after a battle that went all the way to the High Court, the Flannery conviction was quashed.

Understandably bitter, he told accomplished Sydney journalist Neil Mercer in 2003: ‘It was all political to stop me saying anything about the Labor Party, to destroy my credibility. The National Crime Authority was part of all that gang war shit, then with the help of the media they built me up into this underworld figure.'

So what does McCann say about the claims?

Not much.

He was shot around 30 times in a Marrickville park on 27 December 1987.

McCann had a reputation as a Sydney kneecapper, yet the autopsy showed that while McCann had been riddled with bullets, his knees remained intact.

Irony in a full metal jacket.

THE DRUG DEALER WHO WOULDN'T GIVE UP HIS KILLERS

What better way to test
Flannery's loyalty than
to get him to kill one
of his best mates?

 

TONY Eustace was a man of few words and he wasn't going to waste any while taking his dying breaths in the emergency unit of the St George Hospital.

When a policeman asked him who had shot him six times in a Sydney street an hour earlier, his response was as brief as his life expectancy. ‘Fuck off,' he responded.

These were his last words on that subject – or any other – as he died shortly afterwards on the operating table.

Eustace was born in Liverpool on 26 November 1942 and migrated to Australia just after turning 21. He was a low-level crook charged as a young man with possession of stolen property and SP bookmaking. Like many of his ilk he didn't hit the big money until the first drug wave hit.

Eustace became a heroin-dealing middleweight. He could move enough gear to live well but, at least for a while, he could avoid close police attention.

He was on the move but those in front of him were not prepared to get out of his way. He eventually attracted the attention of the Australian Federal Police and was charged with serious drug offences.

Like fellow Sydney underworld murder victims, Eustace had strong Melbourne connections. In 1985 he was on bail in Victoria after federal police charged him with conspiring to import cannabis valued at more than $8 million. The cannabis charges were not his biggest problem. The taxman had already destroyed him financially.

He had been forced to sell his house in Coogee and put his Mercedes in the name of his girlfriend's mother. But while his girlfriend was obliging, the relationship had come at a cost as he had to pay his wife about $40,000 in a messy divorce settlement.