The Russell Street Bombing (4 page)

In addition, the bomb car was examined for fingerprints in a way that had
never been done before. Latent fingerprints that are faint and can't be seen
with the naked eye or with the help of powders, can become visible after fuming
with superglue. Normally, superglue fuming is done on small items placed in a
tank at the Fingerprint Branch, but in the case of the bomb car, something
bigger was needed. Under the direction of fingerprint experts, the car was
placed in a freight container along with tubes of superglue. Heaters were used
to evaporate the glue to form fumes. The fumes solidify on objects that contain
water and since fingerprints are made up primarily of water and fats,
investigators hoped that some prints would show up on the car. Unfortunately,
nothing of evidentiary value was found.

When the bomb car was finished with, it was returned to the Stolen Motor
Vehicle Squad's compound in Port Melbourne.

The red and white chequered blanket from the bomb car was
examined by Bob Barnes at the Materials Research Laboratory. The blanket didn't
belong to the owner of the stolen bomb car so it must have been put there by the
bombers. The rug was in remarkably good condition considering that Barnes
concluded it had been used to cover the timing device of the bomb. Barnes
examined the blanket for explosives residue and in the process, found some short
dog hairs from a terrier-type dog. He passed his findings on to detectives from
the Taskforce.

Another link was made. The bread crates found in the debris of
the bomb blast were identified as being similar in make and colour to some
stolen from a milkbar robbery in Braeside in 9 February - six weeks before the
bombing. Also stolen in the raid on the milkbar, were a quantity of cigarettes
and confectionary.

Detective Sergeant Bernie Rankin was in Adelaide on vacation
when he heard a radio newsflash that a bomb had exploded outside the Russell
Street police headquarters. Like many detectives, he had come across a couple of
crooks in his day who might hate the police enough to do this. One such crook
had recently lost a friend in a shoot-out with the SOG and had openly discussed
revenge against the police. Rankin's experience as a detective told him that
there were not a lot of people who could have done this. They would firstly need
to hate the police enough, and secondly, they would need the know-how to build a
bomb. And bomb skills were not all that common on the curriculum vitae of your
ordinary crook.

When the Russell Taskforce was set up on the day of the bombing, Rankin
contacted the detective in charge, Daryl Clarke. Clarke asked Rankin if he
wanted to come on board when he returned to Melbourne. Like every cop in the
state, Rankin wanted the bombers caught. Within a week, he was back home and a
part of the team.

A room at the Russell Street police headquarters had been set aside for the
Taskforce. Initially consisting of a dozen detectives, the number had increased
to thirty in the week following the bombing. The brass wanted a couple of
detectives from northern, eastern, south-eastern and the western suburbs so that
they could draw on local knowledge from all points of the compass. Also seconded
to the Taskforce were members of the Arson Squad, Major Crime Squad, and
Homicide. O'Connor was one of the thirty.

Detective Senior Constable Chris O'Connor was working afternoon 3-11pm shifts
and was at home between shifts when the bomb had exploded in Russell Street. He
belatedly caught the news as he got ready for work at the Preston CIB. While
O'Connor was watching the live TV coverage, the enormity of what happened could
only be guessed at. And for cops, the bombing would be like the day JFK got shot
- every one of them remembered where they were when they heard about it.

By the time O'Connor became part of the Taskforce, the bomb site had been
cleared. The only reminders where the shallow crater in the road where the car
had exploded, and the shrapnel chips in the brick wall of the Russell Street
police headquarters. When the bomb had exploded, O'Connor had considered himself
lucky - he had been standing across the road from it at the same time the day
before
it had gone off. He also realised how fortunate it was that more
people hadn't been killed. Around 1pm, the Magistrates' Court usually began
emptying of people for the lunch break, and there were usually buses of school
children - visiting either the Courts or the police communication centre at
D-24. When children visited D-24, they lined up along the wall between the north
and the south door of the headquarters. It was sheer luck that a class of kids
weren't caught in the fireball. And because the bomb had gone off at 1.01pm, it
hadn't given the Court time to empty. Thank God.

A week after the bombing, Easter forgotten for the investigators, a clear
picture had emerged of the bomb, and therefore the intentions of the bombers.
The explosives - about 50 sticks of gelignite - had been packed into the boot,
centre console, or the front seat area of the two-tone 1980 Holden Commodore
which had been stolen two days before the bombing. Among the debris found in
Russell Street, the remains of a plastic bread crate had identified. According
to the experts, the main part of the bomb had been packed in the crate then
covered with assorted metal sockets, tools and leftover detonators. These became
deadly flying shrapnel when the bomb went off, making its design and intention
callous beyond belief. It was pure luck that the number of severely injured was
only three.

A week on from the bombing, Angela Taylor hadn't regained consciousness. With
burns to seventy percent of her body, doctors had told Taskforce detectives that
if she lived, it would be nothing short of a miracle.

Bomb experts also knew from the amount of unexploded detonators and gelignite
that the bomb had failed to reach its deadliest potential. The first explosion
had detached a mechanism from the second explosive which had failed to detonate.

The timing device of the bomb was an alarm clock nailed to the block of wood
that Dennis Tipping had found next to the exploded car. It was the same size and
type of wood used for fence posts. When the alarm sounded, the metal piece at
the back of the clock would click over and connect with wires thus completing
the circuit and setting off the bomb. The fact that the bomb makers had used a
Chux Superwipe to keep the wires from connecting, meant that the bomb was
probably built by relative amateurs. In fact experts were amazed that the bomb
hadn't exploded as it was being driven to Russell Street. It would have only
taken a small jolt to dislodge the Superwipe and set off the bomb. The bombers
had been very lucky.

The type of bomb also gave investigating police an insight into the type of
offenders they were looking for. They were not experts or experienced in
handling explosives - in other words, they were lucky rather than master
criminal-types. They had wrapped the gelignite in newspaper in a crude attempt
to stop the gelignite from sweating and possibly exploding.

The bomb was homemade yet powerful enough to have killed anyone standing
anywhere near it. Also, in the week after the bombing, no group had claimed
responsibility as was the pattern with bombings overseas. Detectives had
questioned politically-motivated fringe groups, but no solid suspects emerged.
That could mean that the bombers could be anyone with a grudge against the
police.

Regardless of who did it or why, from the moment the bomb exploded, the cops
took the attack personally. It was on their turf, and one of their officers was
fighting for her life in hospital. Detectives were usually on the outside of a
crime looking in. This time, they were the target and the victims, and they
badly wanted to find those responsible. At the same time, they had to put
personal feelings aside, and gather strong admissible evidence to present at a
trial for when they caught the perpetrators. And no one doubted they would.

Not only were the police in shock, but the city of Melbourne was also reeling
from the senseless attack in their downtown district. Why would anyone want to
bomb the Russell Street police headquarters? Theories of a payback were foremost
in the minds of the investigators as forensic experts began to piece together
the events leading up to the explosion.

So keen were the police to find those responsible, they used a time-honoured
method of investigation. They made their presence known in other areas of petty
and not-so-petty criminal areas. The gaming industry was as good as shut down
during the investigation, which meant that the police weren't the only ones
interested in having the case solved. If enough pressure was exerted in the
right directions, then information could come from unlikely sources.

A link was soon made with the gelignite. On 6 October 1985, a large quantity
of gelignite had been stolen from the Triconnel Mine at Blackwood. The bomb
gelignite was identical to that stolen in the robbery. This meant that the
bombers had planned this for at least six months.

In the days after the bombing, an anonymous caller telephoned
Chief Commissioner Mick Miller five times in response to media appeals for
information. He said that not only did he know who the bombers were, but he also
had photographs of them. The caller couldn't be ignored; if what he said was
true, he could hold the key. The only catch was that that man wanted a
significant reward for his information.

The calls were traced to several public phone boxes around the St Kilda area.
Police were unsure whether the caller had genuine information or whether the
whole thing was a hoax. In any case, they begin to stake out local telephone
boxes and local detectives soon became familiar with the location of every St
Kilda public phone box.

On Friday 4 April, eight days after the bombing, Premier John Cain and
Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Mick Miller offered a reward of $500,000 for
information leading to the capture and conviction of the bombers. Police hoped
that that if the anonymous caller was indeed genuine, the promise of such a
large reward would flush him out. As soon as the reward was announced,
additional police were used to watch phone boxes around the St Kilda area.

The anonymous caller wasn't the only member of the public phoning police with
potential information. Regular re-enactments and reminders in the media brought
forth hundreds of phone calls. One woman said that she had seen a man parking a
two-tone Commodore in front of the Russell Street police headquarters at 12.30pm
on the day of the bombing. With the help of police, she compiled an identikit
photo of him that was circulated among detectives. Several thought the photo
bore a strong resemblance to a small-time crook called Claudio Crupi.

When Taskforce detectives went looking for Crupi, further witnesses came
forward to say that they had seen him wrapping up what appeared to be sticks of
gelignite on the day of the bombing. He was also known to have a grudge against
a detective at the Major Crime Squad. A number of search warrants on Crupi's
house and places he was known to frequent were unsuccessful. It was rumoured
that he'd left town soon after the bombing.

On Sunday 13 April, Taskforce detectives raided a number of
houses of associates of Claudio Crupi. In one of the raids, police found a photo
of Crupi's car which had been involved in an accident. In the background of the
picture another car was parked adjacent to his. Police checked the registration
number and found out it belonged to associates of Crupi's who lived in Moe.
Perhaps Crupi had headed in that direction so they headed there too, but the
illusive suspect stayed one step ahead of his pursuers.

At this stage, a circumstantial case against Crupi was slowly building. A
witness described someone who looked like Crupi parking the bomb car outside
Russell Street headquarters on the day of the bombing; he had been seen on the
day of the bombing wrapping gelignite in newspaper; neighbours said he had left
his home a few hours before the bombing and returned a few hours later; and
finally, he had a known hatred of police. And the fact that he'd left town
straight after the bombing, also weren't the actions of an innocent man. With
the evidence stacking up, against him, Crupi quickly became one of the main
suspects.

When Inspector Bruce Knight had initially mobilised his Special
Operations Group colleagues to respond to the explosion in Russell Street, all
members assisted. However, at 4pm that day, he had to deploy a team to respond
to a bank robbery in Donvale. The get-away vehicle used in the robbery was a
stolen Holden Brock Commodore Special. The SOG members arrived too late, and the
Commodore was nowhere to be found.

Detectives from the Armed Robbery Squad had asked members of the Stolen Motor
Vehicle Squad for a list of any stolen silver Brock Commodores that might be the
car from the Donvale heist. One such vehicle was fished out of the Yarra River
near Wonga Park on 7 April.

On Monday 14 April, Detective Sergeant Arthur Adams from the Stolen Motor
Vehicle Squad arrived at the Port Melbourne compound to examine the Brock
Commodore. The car was in the process of being transported to the Stolen Motor
Vehicle Squad's compound which also housed the bomb car. While he waited for it
to arrive, Detective Adams, and fellow detectives, John Bradbury and Steve
Quinsee looked over the bomb car and noticed the caterpillar of holes where the
chassis number had been drilled out. Like the investigators who had examined it
before them, they too though the drilling out of the number was unusual.
Bradbury and Quinsee had never seen numbers removed like that before, and Adams
had only seen it once - a decade earlier. And like their colleagues, their
observations were purely academic - until the stolen Brock Commodore was
delivered. To the amazement of the three detectives, the Brock Commodore had its
serial numbers drilled out in exactly the same way as the bomb car. Arthur Adams
immediately alerted the Taskforce and met with Bernie Rankin and Daryl
Clarke.