Underbelly 11 Read online

  It is clear that Barry Coates took Matthews’ threats seriously. So seriously he told his daughter, Sharon, while at their Sealake caravan, ‘Nobody wants to get in Billy Matthews’ way.’

  ‘Dad said someone was going to get hurt. He didn’t say who was going to get hurt, he just said Billy Matthews was going to do the hurting.’

  It was April 13, 1985.

  Two days later, an unknown sniper shot Kevin Pearce.

  When local police and later homicide detectives began to investigate the shooting of Pearce it became clear that Matthews was the prime suspect.

  He hated the victim, was in the vicinity, had made threats and believed he would profit from the death.

  But when police began to interview potential witnesses they found some varied from vague to deliberately uncooperative.

  Few wanted to stand up to Bill Matthews.

  One had good reason to be worried. Just days after the shooting Matthews’ lover, Dianne Robertson, drove to the ‘Coates’ house in Adams Street, Bendigo to tell them a rifle was hidden in their backyard.

  Coates looked around an old van body used for storage and found the rifle hidden under a wheel arch with a plastic bag containing a gun magazine and ammunition.

  Coates went inside and told his wife, who was preparing dinner, ‘The gun’s here in our yard. The rotten mongrel has hidden it here.’

  He told her he planned to dump the rifle, even though he thought the gun was used to shoot his former business partner.’ I just didn’t want to get involved. We got rid of the rifle and we just wanted to forget it,’ she said.

  Dianne Coates told police they talked for hours about what to do with the gun, briefly entertaining the thought of going to the police before deciding to stay silent – for one overpowering reason – fear.

  ‘Barry was scared of Bill and getting shot.’

  The couple drove to Lake Eppalock where he threw the gun into the spot known as the Metcalf Pool. If he suffered guilt pangs for his involvement in the cover-up he hid it well. He continued to drive for Matthews even though he was convinced his former partner shot Pearce.

  The gun would have remained hidden if someone with a conscience had not come forward. A woman rang police and told them Matthews shot Pearce then hid the gun in Barry Coates’ backyard.

  She claimed Matthews threatened the Coates family and Coates and his wife then dumped the gun near Lake Eppalock. The caller was Sharon Coates, Barry’s daughter.

  When confronted by police Coates promised to co-operate, taking them to the lake where he waded in to recover the weapon.

  But Coates remained a frightened man and initially refused to implicate the suspect further. While the truckie remained at best a reluctant witness his wife and daughter were more forthcoming.

  Sharon told police that straight after the sniper attack ‘Billy Matthews told him (Coates) over the phone that he had shot Pearcey. Dad has told me that Billy Matthews has told him if he says anything about the shooting, about any of it, then Dad would be next. Dad is very scared of Billy Matthews.’

  Coates’ version of the call was less colourful and he refused to directly implicate the red-hot suspect. If Coates had stood up and made a statement that Matthews had admitted the shooting it would have been enough to lay a murder charge. But he didn’t.

  He remembered a call that night that woke him from a deep sleep. ‘I have a vague recollection of Bill Matthews ringing me at home … I seem to remember him telling me that Pearce had been shot.’

  According to Mrs Coates a few days after the gun was dumped Matthews asked if they could recover the rifle, ‘because he might need it again. Barry was scared but he told him it was gone for good’.

  Later, according to Mrs Coates, Matthews told her husband, ‘I know I can do it now mate’.

  Sharon Coates went further, telling police Matthews had confessed to her father. She said her step-mother said Matthews told Coates, ‘I’m in the big league now, I’m a murderer … Billy Matthews laughed as he said it.’

  She said her father told her, ‘Billy Matthews shot Pearcey because Pearcey’s trod on too many toes, mainly Matthews.’

  After talking to Sharon Coates police decided to have another chat to Barry showing him the statements from his wife and daughter. At first Coates tried to blame a faulty memory for withholding vital evidence. ‘I’m not sure I said those things or’ not. I’m not saying that what they say is wrong. I just can’t remember saying these things.’

  He opened the possibility Matthews paid a hitman to kill his commercial rival. ‘I am pretty sure that Bill Matthews spoke tome of hiring somebody to get rid of Pearce. I can’t remember when he said this before Pearce’s death. It would have been along time before.’

  The gun recovered from the lake was a .308 Valmet Rifle, loaded with Musgrove K 6 ammunition with one in the breech. It was the same ammunition and the same calibre used to kill Pearce. Police were confident that having linked the recovered murder weapon to the suspect they had made their case against Matthews.

  But firearm tests showed the gun from the lake was not the one used to kill Pearce.

  Police traced the history of the rifle. It was stolen from a transport depot in Footscray from the same loading bay where Matthews picked up freight for his Bendigo run. Police now knew he was a thief but they still couldn’t prove he was a murderer.

  WHY were people so quick to believe that Matthews would kill his partner? It would seem the hard-headed truckie revelled in a tough-guy image and gave the impression he could organise the shooting of anyone who stood in his way.

  Pearce’s nephew Clement Pearce said that at a party his uncle told him Matthews was out to get him because he was a witness in the petrol theft case and was trying to recover $30, 000.

  ‘Kevin told me at a party that there was a bullet in the spout for him. He said Matthews would point the gun but wouldn’t pull the trigger … I know that Kevin was very scared of what Matthews would do to him.’

  Clement Pearce knew his uncle had reasons to be wary. Four years earlier Matthews was running illegal gaming cards in Bendigo and wanted to scare off a rival. Clement Pearce told police Matthews tried to enlist him to recruit heavies from Melbourne to solve the problem.

  The younger Pearce, who drank in a few rough Melbourne pubs, responded, ‘I’ll see if I can arrange someone’.

  At first Pearce thought it was just beer bravado but a week later Matthews followed up with a call allegedly saying, ‘I just want them to give them a hiding. If that doesn’t work, if we have to shoot them we’ll shoot them’.

  ‘Matthews had said to me that he could get someone from Bendigo to do it, but it was too close to home.’

  Clement waited a respectable time, then rang to say he couldn’t help.

  Motor mechanic Emmanuel Schembri was another dragged into the increasingly bitter trucking conflict. He said Pearce told him Matthews owed him $32, 000 and he was worried he would never get it back.

  ‘Kevin was scared of Bill and would never drive past Bill’s depot which was around the corner from Kevin’s depot. Kevin also told me he didn’t trust Bill and thought that Bill would shoot him.’

  Schembri told police, ‘Bill told me that if he wanted to get someone bad enough, he would ring up and send someone down and he would be shot. He also told me that he would alibi himself by being a couple of hundred miles away. I think Dianne, his secretary, was there at the time.’

  Later in evidence at the Coroner’s Court Schembri’s memory began to play tricks and he was no longer ‘100 percent sure Matthews had used the word shot’.

  ‘I wish I never sort of said anything about that shooting because it could’ve just been a passing conversation, you know, between two blokes.’

  While many of those close to the men seemed to suffer unexplained bouts of amnesia someone was trying to help police. They received an anonymous tip-off that a yellow car was seen leaving the scene of the crime. The same colour car as that owned by Dianne Robertson.<
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  As a policeman, Roger Irwin was used to being an informal problem solver for friends and family. But when Kevin Pearce began to talk to him at a family party in Broadmeadows on January 12, 1985 the detective knew this was deadly serious.

  ‘He appeared very worried and said there was a person in Bendigo that was out to get him.’ He said his ex-business partner ‘had a bullet in the gun for him’.

  He said Pearce confided, ‘He threatened to shoot me a couple of times.’

  Irwin told him to notify Bendigo detectives about the threats and gave him his home number to ring if there were further problems.

  Maxwell Yates was a truckie who had worked for both Matthews and Pearce. He was rung on the night of the shooting and drove straight to McPhee’s. Just before the victim was loaded into the ambulance he was still worried about the nightly run, telling Yates to ‘Take the truck and do Mildura.’

  Yates told the dying man he would look after everything and then asked, ‘Who mate, Matthews?’

  Kevin nodded his head as if to say yes.

  BILL Matthews is a straight talker as well as allegedly a straight shooter. When interviewed by police he did not conceal his hatred of Pearce.

  ‘Personally I think he’s an arrogant fat c… and he doesn’t want to work. That’s my personal opinion of the bloke and … that’s not why we had the argument. The partnership broke up. The reason was I didn’t think he was working as hard as I was and I said, “Look, you go your way and I’ll go mine”.’

  ‘I haven’t had any contact with the guy for twelve months.’

  ‘I don’t really give a fuck about him as I said, I feel sorry for his missus and kids because none of them have screwed up.’

  He said that on the night of the shooting he drove to Melbourne with his de facto wife, Keryn Strawhorn, to pick up and deliver freight, dropping her at their Bendigo home shortly after 11pm. He then took the truck to his shed in Adams Street where two men helped load goods until lam. Around 3.35am he left the shed to drive his Isuzu van to his brother-in-law’s house then walked the two blocks home.

  His alibi witnesses were the two men who were in the shed with him until lam, meaning Matthews could not have slipped away around midnight to kill his enemy.

  But the men did leave the shed to pick up mail freight just before midnight and did not return for more than 30 minutes – giving him the window of opportunity to get to the mullock heap and return without being seen.

  His depot was just two minutes by car from the mullock heap. Police later tracked footprints from where the sniper fired the shot over two small hills to a reserve where the get away car must have been parked.

  They noted the killer slipped several times clambering over one of the hills and used his rifle as a crutch to struggle over the sandy rise.

  There was another person in the shed that night with Bill Matthews – his loyal and loving assistant, Dianne Robertson, who was prepared to work until nearly 4am alone with her boss.

  Shortly after Pearce died Matthews asked a friend to enquire if he could buy the dead man’s trucks – ‘only to sort of help Joan out’.

  In June 1986 Coroner Hal Hallenstein held an inquest into the death and under the law at the time it was a committal hearing to see if Matthews should stand trial for murder.

  Matthews and Robertson did not give evidence on the grounds of self-incrimination, nor did Barry and Dianne Coates.

  Hallenstein found, ‘One would have to conclude that … it (the murder) was carried out by a person who had some knowledge of Mr Pearce’s routine.

  ‘It was a well-planned and clearly calculated operation.’

  ‘My formal findings on this matter are that Kevin Hugh Pearce … was shot by or by the arrangement and organisation of William James Matthews.’

  Matthews was committed for trial but the Director of Public Prosecutions reviewed the case and the charges were withdrawn.

  As he was never acquitted before a jury the charges can be reissued if fresh evidence is uncovered.

  He did stand trial for allegedly stealing fuel from the company. But with Pearce dead the theft charge against Matthews was terminally damaged and he was acquitted in the County Court.

  Twenty-two years after the shooting Bill Matthews still runs a flourishing trucking firm in Bendigo. He works sixteen hours a day, has more than $300, 000 in the bank and his one social outlet is the Essendon Football Club.

  Police still don’t know if Matthews fired the fatal shot or hired someone to kill his business rival.

  These days he does not feel inclined to discuss the death of his former partner. ‘I don’t wish to say anything. I received legal advice not to make any comments and I don’t think I should go against that now. I hope you understand, thank you.’

  Kevin Pearce’s daughter, Donna said, ‘Our Dad was a loving, caring person with strong, honest values.

  ‘He was a law-abiding man who always put his family first and taught us right from wrong. We are extremely proud to be the daughters of Kevin and Joan Pearce.

  ‘Our lives were shattered 22 years ago when Dad was callously shot and we watched him suffer and die over three long weeks. Our father was a hardworking man who was just too trusting.

  ‘We plead with anyone with information to please contact police.’

  The head of the re-investigation, Acting Detective Sergeant Tim Argall, said ‘Kevin Pearce was a hardworking man who was just trying to earn an honest living.’

  ‘We have established there are several people who know what happened in the lead-up to the shooting, the events that happened that night and the immediate aftermath.’

  ‘I think there would be people whose consciences would still bother them even after more than twenty years. They know who did it and they have to live with it.’

  He said the case was still open. ‘Murder never goes away.’

  When detectives from the cold case unit received the DNA result from the three cigarette butts (found where the sniper waited) they were not expecting a breakthrough, as Matthews did not smoke.

  But his lover and alibi witness did.

  The butts were from Dianne Robertson.

  One puzzle remains. If the killer smoked the cigarettes, why were three butts found at the scene and a packet with only one missing left neatly on a rock?

  Were they planted to push the finger of suspicion away from the non-smoking Matthews? Only one man knows and he’s not talking.

  CHAPTER 6

  Peter Dupas: the predator

  ‘It was his eyes, they were blank. There was something peculiar about him. He was evil-looking.’

  THE little girl was so small she had to clamber on a grave to clean the top of the headstone of her grandfather’s tomb in Melbourne’s sprawling Fawkner Cemetery.

  The grave was taller than most in the Roman Catholic section so the ten-year-old was perched above the thousands of concrete and marble memorials that surrounded her.

  She was in the perfect position to pick up any sound in the near-silence of the cemetery while her mother, who was bending to place flowers on the grave, remained surrounded by the tall tombstones.

  Perhaps that is why Lisa Tinker heard something that her mother didn’t. Or maybe it is that young ears and uncluttered minds pick up what adults can’t. But now, more than eight years later, she knows what she heard.

  It was a scream. ‘I can still recall this scream in my mind. I can recall this scream because it sounded frightening and that’s why it has stuck with me.’

  She said to her mother, ‘Did you hear that scream?’ But Maria, who wanted to visit other family graves and be home by 5pm, did not want to be distracted. She checked her watch to see if they were running late and saw that it was just before 4pm. She then told her daughter, ‘Don’t worry about it, just hurry up and clean the grave.’

  But Lisa Tinker did worry about it and so did the whole family when they saw on television the next day that a young woman had been murdered in the cemetery.


  ‘I heard that girl scream,’ she reminded her mother, who didn’t need reminding.

  That night her father rang Crime Stoppers with the information.

  It was one of thousands of tips and tiny pieces of information handed to police over the next eight years as part of the’ complex investigation into the murder of Mersina Halvagis, 25, who was stabbed to death as she tended her grandmother’s grave on November 1, 1997.

  It was just one snippet but in a police re-investigation in 2005 it became part of a mosaic of hundreds of fragments of information that points to one man – a predator who chooses to remain silent and refuses to answer questions about the case.

  Much of the information was available soon after the murder but some key witnesses also chose to remain silent – not wanting to become involved – until years later they felt compelled to make the calls to police that helped breathe new life into the old case.

  Mersina’s father, George, has devoted his life to finding his daughter’s killer. He has lobbied politicians, held vigils, handed out flyers, haunted courts and prodded police.

  ‘All I have ever wanted was the truth,’ Mr Halvagis says.

  Mersina’s sister, Dimitria, told a victims’ conference late in 2005 how it was impossible to move on and how she suffered flashbacks to the recurring image of Mersina desperately fighting for her life.

  The reward for information into the murder began at $50, 000, was raised to $100, 000 and was finally increased to $1 million.

  The homicide squad initially investigated the case, before it was transferred to a task force. Then in 2005, in one last effort, all information was again re-analysed by Senior Detective Paul Scarlett.

  While the case remains complex, the conclusion is remarkably simple.

  More than 100 names have been nominated to police as the killer. All but one has been eliminated.

  Detectives are convinced that Peter Norris Dupas – a man who has already twice been sentenced to life for the murders of Margaret Maher and Nicole Patterson – killed Mersina Halvagis.

  They believe that Dupas, who has attacked women throughout Victoria for 31 years, has killed at least six times – Helen McMahon (February 1985), Renita Brunton (November 1993), Margaret Maher (October 1997), Mersina Halvagis (November 1997), Kathleen Downes (December 1997) and Nicole Patterson (April 1999).