Underbelly 2 Read online

  AFTERWARDS, Darina sits in the silent house with the policeman for a long time. She forces herself to ask the question. ‘How did it happen?’

  He finds a gentle way to speak the unspeakable. ‘He had a small hole just here,’ he says, brushing his chest with his hand. He didn’t use the words ‘died’ or ‘dead’ or ‘shot’. Darina knows what he means, but is grateful.

  She often ponders, later, the coping mechanism that gets her through that night and ones that follow. When Garrett offers to call her closest friends she says firmly, ‘No, you won’t. I will.’ She doesn’t want a stranger breaking the news.

  She calls John and Julienne Bullock. It’s after lam. John answers, sleepy and apprehensive. She says: ‘Rob’s been shot and he didn’t make it.’ After a second’s pause, it sinks in. ‘We’ll be there.’ They live twenty minutes away, by normal reckoning, on the other side of the lake. They make it in ten.

  The policeman goes home after they arrive. The three sit for hours, talking. They veer from tears to laughter. They don’t wake the children – there will be enough sleepless nights for them in the weeks and months ahead. But, after daybreak, they can’t put it off any longer. They wake them and break their hearts.

  Darina calls her sister and brother-in-law in Sydney, and they agree to drive to Coorambong to tell the oldest daughter, Joanne, then bring her the 650km south to Albury.

  Recalling that first day of the rest of her life, Darina says: ‘Rob did everything in a big way – big wife, big house, big family. Even departing it was in a big way. That morning there were planes and helicopters flying overhead and I thought “Goodness me, darl, you really know how to do it”.’

  THE homicide squad knows about Rob Foots’s death before his widow does. Three detectives on the on-call crew are paged in the first hour. By midnight they’re driving north.

  Detective Senior Sergeant Jeff Maher is in charge, with senior detectives Graeme Arthur and Phil Shepherd. When they get to Talgarno it’s after 4am and minus-six degrees. A local detective and two crime scene experts from Wangaratta shiver in the frost.

  At first light, traffic starts to trickle by. The detectives block the road and speak to drivers to see if, being locals, they had seen anything useful the night before. Some did. This narrows the time of the shooting to less than an hour, after 9.30 but before 10.30. At breakfast time they speak to Darina, and ask to see any firearms in the house. It’s painful, but their job is to eliminate potential suspects, and the first people to eliminate are family members. Then they doorknock neighbors. No-one knows anything, except that Rob Foots isn’t the sort of bloke who gets shot.

  Shepherd, who is to see the case through to the end, has a long talk to the dead man’s friend, John Bullock, who is close enough to know if he had any enemies in business. Meanwhile, the body is moved and sent to Melbourne for a post mortem, and a metal detector turns up a freshly-fired .22 calibre bullet case.

  The only obvious motive seems to be that Foots interrupted a thief. But the detectives are cautious about this, because steel posts are used by farmers – and, as Shepherd says later, ‘cockies don’t tend to pinch stuff from other cockies.’

  So who would want to steal the posts, apart from legitimate farmers? It can only be someone who wants to build a fence. The police wonder if it could be marijuana growers stealing posts rather than arousing suspicion by buying new ones.

  Next day, there’s more to work with. The bullet the pathologist removes from Rob Foots’s body matches the .22 shell from the scene. It went through the heart, then downwards through the liver and lodged in the tenth rib.

  The muddy tyre tracks are identified as being made by near-new Kuhmo KH-832 Powerguards, a tread pattern available for only eighteen months. The axle width indicates the vehicle is a light Japanese four-wheel drive. The fact the tracks turned towards Albury-Wodonga, and that the shooting happened on a weeknight, means it’s probably someone local.

  It isn’t a flying start, but it’s something. The detectives ask every tyre dealer in the border area for records showing who has bought Kuhmo Powerguard tyres in the previous six months.

  As this information trickles in, they start cross-checking registrations of four-wheel-drive owners against licensed shooters, looking to draw up a short list of locals who own guns and four-wheel-drives. Such methods can get results eventually – providing the process of elimination is strict enough not to let a suspect slip through the net with a plausible manner and ready alibi. By the time Rob Foots’s funeral is held six days after his death, many routine inquiries have been made, but there’s little to show for them. The funeral is at the Seventh Day Adventist church in Albury. There have been thirty death notices in the Border Morning Mail, and more than 500 mourners crowd the church. When a video tape of Rob singing a hymn is played on a big screen, people weep.

  Two days later, the police retrace their steps. They go back to Foots’s farm to check the dead man’s possessions. When a detective goes to fetch Foots’s diary, he’s given the notebook that had been lying on the briefcase in the utility. He notices, he says later, what could be a car registration number scrawled faintly on the plastic cover.

  The number is that of a Nissan four-wheel-drive twin cab utility … registered to an address in Firebrace Track, Granya Gap, about twenty minutes away up the road running past Foots’s property.

  Shepherd and fellow detective Steve Tragardh drive to Granya Gap. They find the property. There is no house, only a locked shed. But there are tyre tracks. And the tread pattern matches the muddy ones found at the crime scene.

  It seems, then, that Rob Foots has not just sung at his own funeral, but solved his own murder. But it proves a little more complicated.

  Back at Albury police station, the detectives soon find out that the Nissan’s owner lives in the town. He is David Cox, a sixty-year-old grandfather who has worked forty years for the railways before being made redundant the year before.

  On appearances, Cox doesn’t seem a likely killer. But someone who knows more about him than they do thinks otherwise. An anonymous tip which arrives, by coincidence, while the detectives are at Granya fingers Cox as a suspect because he has a four-wheel-drive, likes guns – and has an old conviction in NSW for stealing farm fencing materials.

  Shepherd doesn’t want to show his hand – yet. He and Tragardh sit off Cox’s place, a bungalow behind his aged mother’s house in South Albury, a down-at-heels area near the Murray. They sneak a look at the Nissan’s tyres – and get a surprise. They are Kuhmos – but worn out, and a different tread pattern from the ones at the crime scene.

  This is the first move of a chess game. Shepherd traces the car’s previous owner. He says he sold it to Cox just nine months before – but not with Kuhmos on it. Question: why would Cox replace one set of tyres with another set of old tyres? Answer: to cover his tracks. But how to prove it?

  A few days later, Cox buys new tyres at the local K-mart – and leaves the old ones there. The police seize them, and take them to a tyre expert, who points out that the soapy lubricant used to fit tyres is on them, meaning they have been fitted some time in the previous month.

  By this time, forensic tests prove the tyremarks at Cox’s Granya property are identical to those at the crime scene. But where are the new tyres that made them?

  The police move. On 30 August they take out a warrant, go to Cox’s house, inspect the Nissan and search the house. They find fourteen firearms. They take Cox to the police station. He denies everything, convincingly. His wife, meanwhile, backs up his alibi that he was home all night on 8 August.

  The last question Shepherd puts to him that day is if he has any idea how Rob Foots died. ‘Cox looked at me with the most earnest expression and said he was sorry he hasn’t, because he wanted to help.’

  They take him home. But not for long. Early next morning, 31 August, they arrest him. This time they point out the damning inconsistencies in his story. He changes it.

  COX admits stealing steel
posts from Foots’s property more than once, and to being there on the night of the killing. But he claims that he and his adult son Phillip (who is slightly handicapped as a result of cerebral palsy) were shooting rabbits when confronted by the angry owner.

  Cox’s story is that Foots assaulted him and his son, and that he, Cox, grabbed the rifle to scare him when he tripped over a piece of wood, accidentally firing a shot.

  He can’t explain why the bullet hit Foots’s heart, then travelled downwards at an angle of thirty degrees. Or why there is no sign of a struggle. Why Foots’s hands weren’t grazed from throwing punches. Why neither father nor son suffered any visible cuts or bruises. Nor does he explain why steel posts were found already pulled from the ground, ready to load.

  What he does explain is the mystery of the missing tyres.

  Aware that the new Kuhmos – bought only days before the shooting – would be an obvious lead, he removed them himself, replacing them with the old tyres, which he had kept as spares. He then drilled holes in the new tyres and threw them in the Murray.

  Cox takes the police to the river, and they retrieve one of the new Kuhmos. They are not so lucky with the murder weapon, which Cox claims he threw into Lake Hume. Several searches fail to find the rifle.

  Cox’s son Phillip is no help. In the interview room he says he cannot even tell the time, let alone remember the events of the night. Sceptical detectives note he is competent enough to hold a driver’s licence, and is married with several children.

  Darina is at the funeral parlor trying to choose a plaque when her mobile telephone chirps. It’s Shepherd, keeping his promise to tell her first about the arrest. ‘I laughed, cried, and clapped. I had tears streaming down my face. I drove straight around to the school to tell the kids.’

  Later, Shepherd drives to Granya to check Cox’s property. He unlocks the shed. Inside it are bundles of brand new steel posts, bought and paid for.

  DAVID Cox was found not guilty of murder at Wangaratta on 7 November, 1996. He was found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to seven years imprisonment with a minimum of five, and three months for stealing seventy star pickets valued at $245. His wife, Irene Mary Cox, distressed by the trial, died suddenly three months later. She is buried in Albury cemetery ten metres from Rob Foots. David Cox made an official complaint to the Victoria Police, demanding the return of a pair of pliers and a rifle magazine. Darina Foots put the family property on the market a year later.

  CHAPTER 3

  Thursday

  The day Al ran out of friends

  ‘If we kill him, will it start a war?’

  APPEARANCES can be deceptive. So can crooks. As Alphonse John Gangitano strutted along Bourke Street, central Melbourne, in the warmth of an early January evening in 1998 he looked nothing like a heavy crime figure whose power base was spinning into terminal decline.

  Strolling along in the twilight with his loyal friend, bail justice Ms Rowena Allsop, his driver, ‘Santo’, and a solicitor who was part of his expensive defence team, Gangitano showed no sign of being nervous about fronting court next morning.

  He was, after twenty years in and around the underworld, no stranger to the criminal justice system. He did not have to ask where the accused was expected to sit when he entered a Magistrates’, County or Supreme Court.

  Gangitano was ‘quite jovial’ Ms Allsop was to recall of that evening on 15 January. ‘We went past a bookshop and he bought me a book on Oscar Wilde,’ she was to remember of the criminal she described as ‘a very special friend.’

  ‘We both had an interest in Wilde. We laughed at the quote, “There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about”.’

  According to Ms Allsop, Gangitano was widely read and, for a Melbourne gangster of Italian origins, had picked three unlikely role models: John F. Kennedy, Napoleon and Wilde. It seemed he was attracted to – and secretly craved – fame and recognition.

  The group met at a trendy eatery, Barfly’s restaurant, near Spring Street, and then Ms Allsop and Gangitano, dressed in fashionable jeans and a crisp white Versace overshirt, went for a wander, window-shopping in two bookshops.

  Ms Allsop, well known in political circles, seemed not to be worried about being spotted with a suspected killer less than a hundred metres from Parliament House. After all, her relationship with Gangitano had been the subject of scrutiny – and disapproval – all the way to the office of the Attorney-General.

  The two stopped when urged to come in for a drink at one of the bastions of conservative Melbourne, Florentino restaurant. Gangitano ordered a scotch and Ms Allsop, a teetotaller, had a coffee.

  Gangitano, who was on a court-ordered 9pm curfew, lingered over his drink until around 8.45. Ms Allsop reminded him that he should head home. Gangitano smiled and said there wouldn’t be a problem if he bent the bail conditions by a few minutes. It wouldn’t be the first time. The bail justice was seemingly unconcerned about the minor breach of the rules. There was no need to nit-pick.

  ‘He kissed me on both cheeks and I wished him well for court the next day and then he left,’ she said later. ‘He didn’t seem worried.’ Santo met him at Barfly’s to take him home to Templestowe in a late-model blue Holden. Ms Allsop never saw him again.

  The relationship between the bail justice and the gangster had long been the subject of interest in legal, political and criminal circles. Rowena Allsop had been popular with many detectives because of her enthusiasm and energy as a bail justice. She was always prepared to come out late at night for a court hearing when called by the serious crime squads. She was fond of publicity, and other bail justices grumbled about her high profile, but no-one doubted her availability and sincerity.

  The former athlete and football umpire moved easily with the champagne set. Why then would a respected Order of Australia recipient and confidante of many police be seen in public on the arm of a notorious criminal? When she appeared with Gangitano at a kickboxing show in Melbourne and jumped into the ring to present a trophy, many old friends shook their heads. Of course, tastes in friends and entertainment can be peculiar: sitting not far away from the gangster and the bail justice was a well-known lawyer and merchant banker, once mooted as a future Liberal Prime Minister.

  Ms Allsop had to endure criticism that, as a bail justice, she should not have befriended a man reputed to be one of the state’s biggest crime figures.

  If she thought her friendship with Gangitano would not reflect on her legal role, the illusion was shattered when she glanced at a police notice-board at an inner city police station while on duty.

  On it was a typed list of eleven independent people to be called to observe interviews with minors and disadvantaged suspects to ensure their rights were protected. Next to Ms Allsop’s name, scrawled in pen, was: ‘Do not use … roots Gangitano.’

  Ms Allsop gave character evidence for Gangitano in 1996 that brought out into the open a relationship that some police had been questioning privately for nearly two years.

  She told the Magistrates Court she had met Gangitano for coffee and late-night meals. ‘He sees me as a role model in the community,’ she told the court. ‘He asked if I would be a professional person he could call on from time to time.’

  Rowena Allsop became an unpaid bail justice in 1989 and was used by the homicide and armed robbery squads more than any other. She had a reputation of being able to be trusted with confidential information. But when she began being seen with a police target many detectives had second thoughts. After Ms Allsop gave evidence for Gangitano, a senior CIB officer instructed squad chiefs that she was effectively banned.

  According to Ms Allsop, she became the victim of a vicious rumour simply because she was an attractive, single woman who tried to help a man who asked for assistance.

  She knows that when police questioned her ‘friendship’ with Gangitano, it was shorthand for alleging that she was sexually involved with him. ‘It was totally malicious, outrageous
and without basis. I wonder if there would have been all the fuss if I was married with two children or I was a man,’ Ms Allsop, a divorcee, asked. ‘I know how the police rumour mill works. A lot of females, including some policewomen I know, have been victims of it over a number of years.’

  Police first started to turn on Ms Allsop when she walked in one door at the Carlton police station as Gangitano arrived through the other. ‘We were having coffee in Lygon Street when my phone went, asking me to attend at the Carlton station. He had to go there to report on bail and I was going there so I drove him the one block to the police station.’

  Amid the controversy, the Attorney-General, Mrs Jan Wade, confirmed she would review the relationship, the police association claimed the issue was of ‘grave concern’ and the Victorian Law Institute said those involved in the criminal justice system should have no outside association with police, lawyers or their clients. The institute failed to mention several celebrated cases of affairs between police and lawyers, including one consummated in the interview room of a crime squad.

  ‘I know I have done nothing wrong. But in the end people will believe what they want to believe,’ Ms Allsop said in her own defence. Many believed the worst. Whether her relationship with Gangitano was brave or stupid is a matter of conjecture – and some debate. But there is no doubt the Victorian of the Year recipient, director of Odyssey drug rehabilitation centre and a former teacher at Winlaton Youth Training Centre, was branded unreliable in police circles.

  Eventually the Attorney-General released a code of conduct for Victoria’s bail justices. It was a thinly disguised swipe at Ms Allsop and her ongoing relationship with Gangitano, a relationship she refused to abandon.

  ‘He was always a perfect gentleman in my company,’ she said. ‘I know he was no angel but I believe he was trying to change.’

  But, for Alphonse Gangitano, gossip about whether he was having an affair with a bail justice was the least of his problems.