Read Killing Time Online

Authors: Andrew Fraser

Tags: #ebook, #book

Killing Time (7 page)

BOOK: Killing Time
7.7Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

The big ticket item, of course, is drugs. Drugs are trafficked within the jail not only by crooks but by officers. Yet again it surprises me the lengths that the authorities go to, and by this I mean the Office of Corrections generally, to hush up these misdemeanours. The obvious reason for the hush-up is that it reflects badly on the system, as it should.

In my previous book I talked about fellow inmates trying to sell me drugs, and prison officers attempted to as well. In Port Phillip it is on for young and old, it's every man for himself in the drug trafficking department! As it turns out, both the prison officers who tried to sell me drugs have been charged with trafficking and have been dismissed from the prison service. How long had the trafficking been going on? The answer is: quite some time. It was common knowledge that these officers were selling drugs, and if that was the case, and all the prisoners knew, how come it took the authorities so long to wake up to it?

The first time I was offered drugs by an officer was when I was walking back from the gymnasium one day while I was in Sirius East. Because I was in maximum protection I could not go anywhere through the main part of the jail without being escorted by an officer. There were just the two of us and we were chatting away about football and he said to me, “Are you right for everything? “Yeah, I'm pretty right.” He said, “Well, are you right for
everything
?” with the emphasis on “everything”. I looked at him and said, “What do you mean?” He said, “Do you need any drugs?” He was as blatant as that and I thought it was a setup. In any event I was well and truly clean of drugs by then and, as now, and I wanted nothing to do with them. Even so, he said if I changed my mind he could easily get me some cocaine. He told me it would be $4,000 for half an ounce or $600 for a gram. He was quite specific about the type of drug and the amounts and the cost. I declined his kind offer and nothing further was said about.

Another prison officer at Port Phillip was charged too. She and I had had a similar conversation one day when I was being escorted to the gym. I was not the only prisoner this happened to; it happened regularly.

While on the subject of the gym and prison officers, what about the prisoner who was having sex with a female gym guard? The shit hit the fan well and truly, the crook being shipped off to the slot and the screw getting the heave-ho. This was not an isolated incident. Another bloke, Joe, with whom I had been in Sirius East was moved out of protection to a medium security prison and, hey presto, started horizontal folk dancing with one of the female staff, the inevitable result being that young Joe was sent back to Port Phillip for a cold shower or two!

One officer at Fulham suicided in the prison car park after he had been found in possession of child pornography.

It was blindingly obvious that the gymnasium was the handover point. I have seen packages change hands there that were obviously drugs because of the size of the package and the way in which it was slipped from one hand to the next. Easy to miss, but equally easy to spot if you know what you are looking for. With my history of drug abuse and the clandestine nature of the drug industry, it was apparent to me what was happening. Once a crook had scored he would head for the toilet and “boot” the drugs (stick them up his bum) and then head back to the unit where it was party time!

It's interesting that, since I raised the issue, in my last book, of officers selling drugs and of drugs in jail, not one person has come out and said that I am lying. I find that an extraordinary acceptance of guilt by omission. Have these officers been dealt with by the courts, and what penalty was imposed, if any? Have you seen a result published in the media? I haven't.

The other random observation I wish to make doesn't surround the prison officers and the way the prison is run, but rather the genesis of some of the prisoners and some of the trends that appeared to emerge. The one that interested me the most was the number of ex-servicemen in custody for crimes of violence. In particular, there were four blokes in there who were all ex-army. All in for shooting murders. Three were in for indiscriminate murders and the fourth was in there for a totally irrational piece of behaviour which resulted in a murder and one attempted murder.

One of them, Julian Knight, is infamous in the state of Victoria as the Hoddle Street killer. He murdered a number of people in cold blood, for no apparent reason, in Hoddle Street one night many years ago. Knight is in custody and there he shall remain until he shuffles off this mortal coil.

On its own this is not so interesting, but the second army person I came into contact with in Sirius East was Andrew Norrie, another member of the Dupas crew. Norrie was a former soldier who had been hitchhiking to Victoria from Queensland when he was picked up by a couple. Norrie murdered these charitable people, who had picked him up out of the goodness of their hearts. One of the victims had been made to run through the bush while Norrie and his co-accused had pot shots at them, just like at target practice.

The third was Bobby “the Batsman” Pickford, so called for his serial self abuse that went on day and night. I know because I was in the next room and could hear! Bob had also been hitchhiking after discharge from the army and had murdered a mum and dad, yet again for no apparent reason, had sex with both people after they were dead, and kept their bodies in the back of their utility, which he stole and drove away from the scene of the crimes. Some weeks later the Batsman was brought undone by a Vietnam veteran who, when walking down Darlinghurst Road in Sydney, smelt a stench coming from the car. Being a Vietnam veteran he knew precisely what that stench was and called the police. Pickford has now done twenty-three or twenty-four years and I understand he is just about to be released or has been released.

I happened to live with Pickford at Fulham and he was completely unready for life on the outside. His sole preoccupation was to clean out the jail's rubbish bins. That was his job and nothing else occupied his day except his obsessive bin cleaning. No rehabilitation, no courses and no leaves. To say the Batsman was not ready for release is an understatement.

The poor old Batsman had undertaken a basic cookery class in jail and had worked in the kitchen at Pentridge, he believed he was a “Silver Service Chef”, whatever that may be! At every turn he would tell you, usually incorrectly, how to cook a particular dish.

I have always been a bit of a cook and once I arrived in the cottages at Fulham and was able to do some proper cooking I got right into it. The weekends were the highlight of my existence because that was when visits were allowed. I was very lucky that not one weekend went by without one of my friends making the trek from Melbourne all the way to Sale. Sale has nothing to recommend it, so those who visited did so purely out of friendship and not to take in the local sights.

I became a bit of a dab hand with cake cooking and I used to cook most of the week in eager anticipation of my visitors. We were allowed to take food out to the visit but unconsumed food could not go back to the unit. Visitors were not allowed to take away any food either. Leon Woods, one of the screws, would not even let my son take a muffin I had baked for his birthday out of the jail. The look of disappointment on my son's face tore my heart out. A good bloke is Mr Woods.

One night I was baking a Lumber Jack cake for a visit and the Batsman was watching. I told him what I was baking and he observed that there was a lot of desecrated coconut in the recipe. I could not believe what he had just said, so I corrected him, telling him the coconut was desiccated, not desecrated – but no, Bob wanted to argue the toss. In exasperation I finally told him not to argue with me when it comes to the English language because desiccated means dried (and in this case shredded), while desecrated was what he did to mum and dad in the ute when he killed them! He did not get the joke!

Another Batsman story: Bob would use every dish, saucepan and utensil in the joint to make one small pizza base. One day I walked into the kitchen and there was stuff everywhere: on the benches, on the floor and on the stove. I asked whether Bob had caught “that bloke”, to which he replied “Which bloke?” I said “The one who threw the hand grenade in the kitchen.” Again he did not get the joke.

The fourth ex-serviceman in for a murder was Frank Garner, who also lived in my cottage at Fulham. How's that for the daily double: living with two blokes, both off their cruets and both convicted of indiscriminate murders! Garner had been involved in what he perceived as a matrimonial slight from his ex-wife and had gone around and blown his ex-wife's boyfriend away through a closed door. In other words, shot the wrong person and so then had tried to kill his ex-wife as well. I lived with Garner for over a year.

Norrie and Pickford had blocked their crimes out of their memories, so much so that they didn't think that they had committed any offence. Garner came from the other direction, was totally unrepentant and said he would do it all over again if the opportunity presented itself. Now that he has been released, one wonders what benefit he has had from being in prison. I worked with him in the laundry. Andrew Norrie cleaned cells at Port Phillip until he was deported. He undertook no programs, and in fact did nothing for himself, that would ready him for the outside world. Bob Pickford cleaned rubbish bins at Fulham until he was released. What a ripping effort in the rehab department!

What is going on in our armed forces if these types of people are accepted into the armed services when they are clearly not mentally stable? Is it the army that fails to address the issue or discover the problem while recruiting, or does the army make these people that way? Whichever way it goes, it is a disturbing trend.

The second and more unsettling aspect is that not one of these men, as far as I could see, received any treatment at all that dealt with the matter of their extraordinarily violent offending. All four men had served, or are serving, big sentences and were to be released back into the community without any adequate preparation for what I personally found a confronting return to the real world. If I felt so confronted re-entering the community after five years how must have these blokes have felt after a double figure whack? Nobody seems to ask these questions and most assuredly the Office of Corrections volunteers no answer. It further raises the question: What in God's name is the Parole Board doing? It is well known in prison that there are certain answers the Parole Board seeks when interviewing a prisoner and if you answer correctly your parole chances are greatly enhanced. These blokes finish their sentences and they are let out the door. They are let out the door without any preparation for the outside world and if they can't cope out there, the obvious reaction is that they are likely to kill again.

By the way, I never got to see the Parole Board. I was released without once seeing anybody from Parole or discussing the matter of parole with anybody. I was on the list to see the Parole Board before I left jail but my name was taken off the list without any explanation whatsoever. The only thing I received from the Parole Board, to ready me for the outside world, was a discussion with the officer at Fulham whose job it was to prepare you for the outside world by “helping” you with opening bank accounts, getting on the dole, and filling out various other forms. I went down and sat with him and filled out all the necessary paperwork. The next day he told me he had been in to Sale and lodged everything, so when I was released I would automatically be on the dole and a bank account would be open. Wrong! When I was released from jail I attended the dole office with a piece of paper that this officer had given me. I presented it and the dole officer looked up the computer only to find nothing had been lodged. The result was hours at Centrelink filling out forms that I'd been told had already been completed and lodged on my behalf. This is the help you get in jail to make your transition back into the real world as seamless and stress free as possible.

Chapter 4

Peter Dupas: The Story So Far

Ah! Well a day!
What evil looks
Had I from old and young!
Instead of the cross,
the albatross
About my neck was hung.

– SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE,
RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER

Standing at muster on my first night in Sirius East, having looked around and seen all the detritus of humanity that I was banged up with, I shuddered. I shuddered when I thought of the horrific crimes and the awful suffering this group of men had brought upon society. But none sent a shudder down my spine more than the small, fat, bespectacled, baby-faced man standing directly opposite me staring blankly into space. That man was Peter Norris Dupas.

Outwardly Dupas looks innocence personified: straight hair that never stays combed away from a fringe for longer than a moment and which flops down over his forehead. To give the hairstyle an innocent name from my youth, he sported a Beatle Cut. Large thick spectacles, a round pudgy face to match his short pudgy body, he rather reminded me of Pugsley in the 1960s TV show
The Addams Family
. But what you see is not always what you get. I knew from my life as a criminal lawyer that Dupas had a long and extensive criminal history, all for violent sexually related offences. When I first met him, this career of perennial sexual offending had culminated in his being sentenced to a life sentence with no minimum term being set for the mutilation murder of a psychologist, Nicole Patterson, in her consulting suite attached to her home. Her murder was particularly violent and gruesome, and the actions in this murder completely belied the looks of Dupas. However, I was to find out over the next fifteen months what a seething mass of psychopathic pathology this man really was.

BOOK: Killing Time
7.7Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Nights With Parker by Tribue,Alice
The Watchers by Stephen Alford
The Secret Sinclair by Cathy Williams
Sand City Murders by MK Alexander
Doctor Who: War Games by Malcolm Hulke
Max by Michael Hyde
The Last Good Kiss by James Crumley