Underbelly 4 Page 17

  At the same time another neighbour looked out of her kitchen window. She saw two men punching a third who ‘appeared to be pleading for help and seemed distressed’.

  She watched as the victim ‘put his hands together as if he was praying, begging for mercy, crying and shaking his head.’ He was thrown into the boot and it was slammed shut.

  Both witnesses called the police. By 12.35 the Glen Waverley divisional van pulled into Regal Court and senior constable Mark Standish walked up the drive to find the house locked.

  When police went into the house they found a note in Vietnamese. ‘You call mother to tell her that I have gone with the guys from brother Phuc’s company … those guys said to give mother seventy-two hours to pay the money.’

  The deadline was set at midday on 2 May.

  Who knows what would have happened if the two neighbours had not called the police? It is possible the money would have been paid and no-one would have known.

  When police checked the scene there was little to indicate who the abductors were. But, as Senior Constable Standish walked up the drive, he noticed something on the ground.

  It was a black Marlboro baseball cap … one of the two given to a passenger who had bought duty-free cigarettes in the Los Angeles airport nine days earlier.

  POLICE now know that three men, including the American hitmen, the Bui brothers, went to Regal Court just before midday. The driver left the brothers, who used the key stolen from the rice container to enter the house and ransack it, looking for money.

  When Le returned the brothers grabbed and beat him before forcing him to write the note.

  They rang the driver on a mobile phone and ordered him to return. As they went down the drive Le broke away, knocking the cap off the head of one of the hitmen.

  That night Mrs Ha called Brother Phuc from the criminal investigation office of the Glen Waverley police. There was no point in long discussions. The man who had organised the kidnapping said, ‘You have three days to transfer the money to Hong Kong, if no money, everything happen to Ang (her son).’ In another phone call nearly thirty minutes later he said, ‘Look, I have told you already I can do whatever I want. When you have the money prepared, ring me.’

  Time was already running out.

  DAY ONE (30 APRIL): The kidnap victim was being held in a house in Glendale Road, Springvale. The kidnappers used four public telephones in Springvale to make nine calls to mobile phones used by members of The Brotherhood. Police believe they were given instructions and regular updates on the progress of their ransom demands. Police went to the Federal Court to get warrants to start monitoring suspects’ mobile phones. The phone taps were to provide vital evidence but, ultimately, they would not help the kidnap victim. The tapes provided a chilling record, as the chances of Le living through the ordeal slipped away. Like a black box on aircraft, they were to show what went wrong and pinpoint when danger turned to disaster.

  DAY TWO (1 MAY): Brother Phuc called the victim’s mother, Mrs Ha. She pleaded for her son, but he made it clear that paying the money was the first step in any negotiations. He said: ‘Now, I am sorting things out with you now, and that is you owe me money. Are you going to pay or not? You tell me. Do not discuss any other matter. Everything has its place. You must sort out one thing first before you can go on to the next.

  The $400,000 – are you going to pay me or not?

  ‘You play games and there will be nothing good in it for you. Do you understand? You know my personality. You understand that? He will always stick to his principles, he won’t cheat anyone, but no-one should cheat him.

  ‘You better understand. There are still many games. I am not saying that it will be such and such. Do you understand? But with you playing games you have overstepped the mark a little.

  ‘I have misjudged you. You are too low. I accept that I am stupid. I do not blame you any longer.’

  The mother may have sensed that the chances of her son being returned alive were ebbing away and she started playing for time. ‘I am only thinking of my child. But the time before I have already said to you to allow me until the end of May. But you did not understand me and did that thing.’

  Brother Phuc remained unmoved: ‘Why did you allow it to reach that stage?’

  DAY THREE (2 MAY): Brother Phuc called Ha Que Thi Mai at 10.45am. He said ‘(For) the matter to be resolved between you and I if you want to be happy it will be joyous and if you want to be unhappy then it will be sad.’

  There were further calls and threats at 10.57am then, two minutes later, he extended the deadline until that night. Later he again extended until noon the next day.

  ‘There will be someone coming to collect the money. But if something should happen to my people coming to collect the money, then you will accept full responsibility. Everything is caused by you. You have brought everything about by yourself. Therefore you have to accept the consequences. No matter how tough things get, you will have to bear the responsibilities … You have played one game after the next, In short, you can’t win.’

  Ha asked if her son is alive. Phuc replied: ‘Now, you do not mention that matter too early okay. This matter, you sort out my money, that amount of money for me okay. After it is done then I speak to you … I promise you that I will take care of it properly for you. With my character of paying back in kind both vengeance and debt, do you understand? There … that is my only request. If you do that to my satisfaction then there is no problem … the money, if I collect it in full, all matters shall be happy … Whether you pay me or not is determined by your conscience. Everything, family happiness and the like is up to you to decide. I have told you many times, not just today.’

  DAY FOUR (3 MAY): Brother Phuc extended the deadline until midday. When the money was not moved to the four Hong Kong bank accounts Le Anh Tuan, a young man who had been about to buy a house and have a family, was killed on the orders of a man he had never met.

  In the days Le was held in the Springvale house he had refused to eat. Finally his kidnappers fed him sedatives and he was shot dead while sleeping. He was shot in the right side of the head – execution style – and would have died instantly.

  His body was then dumped in an aqueduct in Mile Creek, Noble Park.

  At 2.25pm, Bui Tan Huu, the executioner from Long Beach, rang the kidnap driver from the Melbourne Airport. Bui and his brother flew to Sydney that afternoon. Their work in Melbourne was done.

  But Brother Phuc was still determined to get ‘his money’ and continued to talk to Mrs Ha. In one phone call the mother tried to draw him into incriminating statements. ‘I am telling you the person coming to pick up the money is only a black pawn. You should remember that. The person is totally not privy to anything, okay? I have already told you that I am not going to say anything over the phone … apart from the matter of asking you to repay the money … Now, you do not have to talk to me on the phone any more. That’s all.’

  He starts refusing to take her calls. She rings and another man answers the phone, telling her brusquely, ‘You do not talk over the phone. You cannot solve anything. Don’t treat us like children. We are not children. You must understand, this is not Vietnam where you can trick people. Don’t think like that.’

  Later, she rang again. The man, believed to be Truong’s brother-in-law, said: ‘If you intend to play with the big brothers then you go ahead … There are people keeping an eye on you. You are not playing fair. That is why they do not want to phone you yet … There is someone keeping an eye on your every move. Don’t think that things are so simple. You do not have to worry about anything. If you play fair then nothing will happen. It will be beautiful forever. That is all.’

  DAY FIVE (4 MAY): Even though Le was already dead, Brother Phuc continued to demand the money. The following day the three ‘black pawns’ were ordered to collect the ransom at Spencer Street railway station.

  Two of the men, including a former captain in the North Vietnamese Army, flew from Sydney for the collect. />
  Police now know Brother Phuc had some of his men watching the drop-off point and they identified some of the police waiting. But the man in Hong Kong was prepared to sacrifice his collectors in the hope they could still get the money.

  At 9.28am, 10.26am, 11.07am, 11.25am and 11.40am Ha received phone calls from The Brotherhood in Hong Kong and was told to bring $400,000 to Spencer Street. She was told to take the money to Bus Stop thirty-one, where she was to hand it over to the ‘black pawns.’ But at 11.54am she received another call: ‘You do not have to come. The way you play is pretty ordinary. You don’t have to come … There is also someone standing there waiting for us already. You stay there. If you feel like playing games, then you go ahead.

  ‘On your side, every move you make, we know. There are people there already … They have been keeping watch since this morning.

  ‘You have been talking on the phone for a long time and they know what you are talking about. They have been listening on your phone. Happy or sad, it’s up to you.’

  When police moved in to make the arrests at 11.59am ‘The Captain’ was on his mobile phone talking to his controllers in Hong Kong. The three collectors were taken to the St Kilda Road police station. Police then noticed a bulge in the captain’s mouth. He was attempting to swallow a list of phone numbers including Brother Phuc’s Hong Kong mobile number.

  Hours after the arrests in Melbourne, Brother Phuc flew out of Hong Kong to Vietnam and then back to his base in London.

  At 12.57pm Brother Phuc rang the executioner in Sydney and in a three-minute call he told him they had been betrayed. In the next few weeks both American hitmen slipped out of Australia and flew to Vietnam.

  After the arrests at Spencer Street Station, the Royal Hong Kong Police Force Organised Crime and Triad Bureau hit five homes and offices identified as connected with The Brotherhood through international bank records.

  At one of the flats in Kowloon were two men. One was Nguyen Hoa Ngoc – the man who had received the Marlboro promotional cap and flew with one of the Bui brothers from the US on 20 April.

  During the search they found the original fax message demanding $400,000 from Ha. They also found a novel called Until Proven Guilty. Written inside it were two telephone numbers. One was the Sydney motel where the Bui brothers stayed from 3 to 5 May and the other was the Los Angeles home of the hitmen’s parents.

  Fingerprints on the fax also matched those of the person who mailed 1.3kg of heroin to the Australian Capital Territory in April 1996.

  On 7 June the body was found in the Noble Park drain and police knew they faced an international murder investigation. Senior Detective Steve Tragardh of the homicide squad had a contact in a tobacco company who was able to provide information on the US Marlboro promotional caps. This breakthrough took the investigation to Los Angeles.

  Detectives were able to identify six people involved in the kidnapping – two from Melbourne, two from London working from Hong Kong and two from the United States.

  The old mates’ network proved effective. A Victorian police inspector rang a friend from the Hong Kong force and asked for help. An Australian Federal Police agent in California used personal contacts to get local detectives to help find one of the kidnappers. A Melbourne policeman rang a friend at New Scotland Yard and the Flying Squad began searching for Brother Phuc.

  On 17 June, 1997, Officer Zbigniew Hojlo from the Oakland Police Department and Sergeant Frank Sierras from the Emeryville Police Department flew from San Francisco and then drove to the Long Beach City College, where a man called Bui Quang Chuong was studying history. They said they wanted to talk to him over local extortion and fraud crimes. The nervous Bui puffed on cigarettes during the interview. One friendly policeman leant over and told him that while the office was officially non-smoking he could drag away freely as long as he made sure he put them out. Just to make sure, the policeman added, could he spit on the lit end of each butt to make sure they were out? The suspect was happy to oblige.

  The kidnapper was relieved he was not asked any questions about Australia and left believing he was in the clear.

  What he didn’t know was the police were carefully putting the three butts into a special exhibit container filled with a bag of dry ice, ready for Hojlo to fly it to Melbourne to be DNA tested.

  The tests established that Bui was likely to have once worn the baseball cap found in the Glen Waverley driveway. While the evidence wasn’t enough to extradite Bui from the US, it showed police they were on the right track.

  The investigations finally identified the suspects in the US, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Australia and Britain.

  ABOUT ninety minutes out of Hanoi, in the Ha Tay Province of Vietnam, the Ministry of Public Security has built the Provisional Detention Centre. The jail is so remote that many of the inmates – and most of the guards – have rarely seen a white face.

  When Steve Tragardh of the Victorian homicide squad and federal agents Stewart Williams and Laurie Grey headed from the Australian Embassy through Hanoi’s chaotic streets on their way to the jail they knew they would have only one chance to talk to the man who, they believed, had killed Le in Springvale.

  The investigators were tied to a strict timetable. They could interview Bui Tai Huu, the executioner who had flown to Australia from California to kill, but only from 9.30 to midday and again from 2pm until 4pm. Midday to 2pm had been reserved for lunch with the prison chiefs, as the guest of one Colonel Nam. Tragardh had so many questions that he requested to skip lunch. He was told this would be an insult – no lunch, no interview.

  They arrived at the sprawling, single-storey prison, were taken to a room and sat at a table. Bui was ushered in. There were no shackles or handcuffs. There was no need. There was nowhere to run. Bui seemed relaxed, despite being interviewed for a murder that would earn him a hefty jail term in Australia. He refused to make admissions on tape but chatted amicably with Tragardh ‘off the record.’

  Before they were well into the story guards stopped the interview. It was time for lunch with the Colonel.

  It was a banquet of pond fish, dogmeat, rice and jail-made brandy. Colonel Nam sat between Tragardh, whom he nicknamed ‘The Strong One’ and Williams, ‘The Handsome One’. He grabbed at the blond hairs on Tragardh’s arms and head, saying he had not seen a fair-haired person before.

  He told the Australians that all the food and brandy had been prepared by inmates. Tragardh told him that wouldn’t happen in Australia for fear that the prisoners would adulterate the food. Nam smiled when the statement was translated to him. He then explained it was not a problem here because if a prisoner tried that … the remainder of the explanation did not need to be translated, as the prison chief slowly ran his finger over his throat.

  After lunch Tragardh was able to share a beer with Bui. Then he played his best card. The executioner was in jail because he had been arrested with a kilogram of heroin in Vietnam. If he stayed he faced certain execution, but if he gave evidence in Australia he would serve a sentence in Melbourne and leave jail alive.

  But there was no deal. Bui said he wouldn’t be going back to Australia with the visiting detectives. As Bui saw it he had no choice but to stay and be executed on the heroin charge. If he gave evidence about the syndicate in Australia it might save his life by keeping him in an Australian jail – but all his family in the United States would be murdered.

  That was the power of Brother Phuc. According to the executioner, Truong could order an innocent family in America to be slaughtered from his jail cell in Melbourne, and would do it without hesitation. For the man who had executed other people himself, it was a case of ‘if you live by the sword, you die by the sword.’

  WHEN Brother Phuc was finally escorted onto the British Airways 747 at Heathrow by Extradition Squad detectives from New Scotland Yard, few on the packed flight knew he was a murder suspect heading to Melbourne for a Supreme Court trial.

  Truong was brought in before any other passengers were allowed on th
e flight. He was handcuffed to Steve Tragardh and they sat in the last row of three seats in economy. Their handcuffed hands were hidden discreetly under a jumper.

  The prisoner was wedged in the window seat, next to him was Tragardh and in the aisle seat was the head of the homicide squad, Detective Chief Inspector Rod Collins.

  For security reasons, the two detectives and the suspect were allocated their own toilet, which remained locked. The reason was simple. Police feared another passenger could plant a weapon in the toilet for Truong to grab.

  Tragardh told the man that he had hunted around the world they could all relax and enjoy the flight if he understood that he no longer gave the orders. On this trip he had to remember at all times that he was a prisoner and not a passenger.

  Truong nodded in agreement. He had one request. ‘Please, could you put a handkerchief under the handcuffs?’ The Victorian policeman asked why. The prisoner indicated he was concerned the chunky metal cuffs could scratch his gold watch. It was a Gucci, worth more than a month’s pay for a policeman. During the flight the handcuffs were removed and the suspect was allowed to scan the menu.

  A flight attendant asked if he wanted a drink. He automatically answered, ‘red wine’, the habit of dozens of first class trips. Tragardh reminded him that this was not a pleasure flight. He settled for Coca Cola. If Brother Phuc was worried about the court battle ahead it didn’t affect his appetite. He ate Moroccan chicken, Italian salad, a cheese and tomato omelette, stir fried chicken with black bean sauce, pickled vegetables and a chocolate dessert.

  After one meal he lent over to Tragardh and said with a smile, ‘Better than prison food.’ Which, of course, is a matter of opinion.

  Truong later said that he had difficulty understanding English. The problem was so great that the courts would later order that transcripts of the committal evidence should be translated to Vietnamese at a cost of $60,000.

  But his language problems did not seem to worry him on the flight. He managed to kill time on the plane listening to the comedy channel – in English. And he laughed at the right places.