Underbelly 5 Page 6

  There was a movie poster in the front hallway. It was of the Kevin Costner hit, The Bodyguard.

  CHARLIE Bezzina had been a policeman for 20 years and a homicide detective for four when he walked into the crime scene where Phyllis Hocking lay dead.

  Years of experience as a suburban detective and a senior investigator told him this was no burglary. ‘The cords on the stereo gear stacked up had been cut. This meant the thief would not have been able to re-sell the gear,’ he said.

  He said police checked local burglary patterns and spoke to local thieves. ‘It didn’t make much sense.’

  Phyllis Hocking was wearing a watch, which was smashed. It had stopped at 2.05. Later tests proved the watch was not working and had been smashed somewhere else, then put on her wrist.

  Police believe the watch was supposed to provide Philip with an alibi, as it was set at the time he was to see prospective clients in his office.

  Philip Hocking was an obvious suspect and he was interviewed at length on the day of the murder. ‘While he had an alibi he remained one of a number of suspects,’ Detective Senior Sergeant Bezzina said. ‘We tend to start from those closest to the victims and then work out in larger circles.’

  Police wanted public help to catch the killer and they asked Philip if he would talk to the media to push the cause. Never shy, he jumped at the chance. Less than a day after discovering the body, he was on air with 3AW’s Neil Mitchell, playing the role of the grieving son.

  ‘She was 80 next week. We were organising her birthday party,’ he said. ‘Well, you know, I’m on here Neil, because I think that somebody probably knows who did this and I think they should stop this person.’

  Later that day he went to a media conference at the CIB headquarters in St Kilda Road to plead for help to catch his mother’s killer.

  He said that when he found the body, ‘I went to pieces pretty much … one push and she would’ve toppled over … she couldn’t hurt a fly really.’

  In an interview with journalist, Tara Brown, on A Current Affair, Hocking accepted he was a suspect for his mother’s murder. ‘(It) doesn’t surprise me at all. I’d be very surprised if I wasn’t.’ He said he was an obvious suspect because ‘Our family stands to gain financially.’

  When Charlie Bezzina learned of the fire-bombing and burglaries when Phyllis lived across the road, it further discredited the burglary-gone-wrong theory. ‘We thought she was either the unluckiest lady in the world or the victim of some vendetta.’

  The obvious question that police wanted to know was who would benefit most from her death. It was Philip Hocking.

  DESPITE a $50,000 reward, the case stalled and in 1995 Charlie Bezzina took promotion and transferred from the homicide squad. But, when he returned two years later he was quick to pick up the investigation again.

  On 25 August, 1998, a woman arrived at the St Kilda Road office of the homicide squad with information on the murder of an old lady. It was Kathleen Andrews, Brent Hocking’s former wife. She told Bezzina the couple had split, but on 27 January, 1996, they went to a Fitzroy restaurant to discuss a reconciliation. They decided they should make a fresh start.

  ‘We had about two glasses of red wine each and Brent said that he wanted to be totally honest with me because of what he’d put me through.’ He spoke of previous affairs and mistakes before they decided to try again.

  It was a warm night and as they strolled back to Brent’s two-storey town house off Brunswick Street, he continued his new display of honesty. He turned to her and said, ‘By the way, it was me that killed granny Hocking.’

  One of Brent’s former business partner and friends, Matthew Vicendese, was then to tell police of a conversation they had after a bottle of bourbon whisky.

  They discussed building the carpet cleaning business, then moving into art dealing and running giant dance parties – but they needed money.

  Vicendese jokingly said, ‘We could bump off my grandfather for the inheritance.’

  Hocking’s mood changed. ‘He went all serious and told me not to do it. He then said he had done “something similar” five years ago and it had been the cause of constant bad luck since.’

  Vicendese asked a few questions and Hocking said he hit his grandmother three times with a metal object. ‘It was that easy.’

  ‘I was shocked at what he had said and he appeared very moved and was crying when saying to me that his father pushed him into it.’

  Brent, who had changed his name to Japaljarri after he began selling Aboriginal art, knew he was the target of the fresh investigation into the murder. Friends would ring him to say Charlie Bezzina and his team of homicide detectives were asking new questions. Japaljarri went to see his sister, Rachael Ovelsen, on 21 February, 1999, and confessed that he had killed Phyllis.

  ‘Our father had been brainwashing Brent for months, telling him how evil granny was and how badly she’d treated our father when he was young,’ she would tell police.

  He said he knew he might still have been able to get away with the murder but he wanted ‘to tell the whole truth’.

  Ms Ovelsen rang the Hawthorn police and asked them to come over. As soon as a policeman and woman arrived, Japaljarri told his story. ‘My father finally asked me to knock her off while she was staying at his house and so one day when she was alone, I went over there, knocked her over the head with a steel bar and killed her.’

  They rang the homicide squad and Charlie Bezzina took control. Japaljarri said: ‘I’d rather clean the slate and I also wanted to bring my father into this, because he’s the person that coerced me in to doing it and I want him brought to justice as well, and I understand that I know I’ll probably go to jail, but that’s fine.

  ‘He’s a con man and he’s addicted to making money and addicted to not caring whether it’s legitimate.’

  Within hours of Japaljarri being arrested Philip Hocking rang Rachel from New Zealand. ‘He tried to press me into telling him what Brent had told the police, but I refused. I was cold and direct to him and he seemed nervous and he hung up.’

  Japaljarri was charged with murder and during his committal hearing at the Melbourne Magistrates Court earlier this year, his father was called to give evidence.

  Far from being frightened or concerned for himself, the serial under-achiever seemed to relish the attention when he first entered the witness box.

  He didn’t want to answer certain questions and was dismissive of legal procedure. During the lunch break he employed a lawyer who told the court during the afternoon session that Hocking would refuse to testify on the grounds of self-incrimination. He was excused. Several people in the court said he turned and smirked at his son, who was facing life in prison.

  Months later Philip’s lawyer contacted the homicide squad wanting to find Hocking. He had failed to pay his bills.

  WHEN Justice Frank ‘The Tank’ Vincent sentenced Japaljarri to a minimum of 15 years in the spring of 2000 for the murder of Phyllis Hocking, he gave the impression he wouldn’t have minded if Philip had been in the dock with his son.

  He said Japaljarri claimed his father originally asked him to break into her Box Hill unit ‘so she’d go into an old persons’ home and so he could get hold of her money earlier’.

  ‘I accept that there is a high probability that this was the case,’ Justice Vincent said. The Supreme Court judge said he also believed the fire-bombing was Philip’s idea. ‘I accept your claim that your actions on this occasion were also carried out at your father’s request and partly to assist him in his endeavours to secure access to your grandmother’s assets.

  ‘It seems that your father was incensed by the failure of the arson attack and became even more determined to have his mother killed.

  I think it is likely, as you claim, that you were driven by your father to his home and some joint activity was then undertaken to create the impression the burglars had been disturbed. He then left and returned to his business premises.’

  Justice Vincen
t gave the clear impression he hoped the investigation would not stop with just one conviction: ‘I have also taken into account, in your favor, the fact that you are prepared to give evidence against your father, should he ever be charged in relation to Mrs Hocking’s death.’

  When Phyllis Hocking died, she left a will and an estate worth $350,372.56. It included almost $200,000 in five bank accounts, the Box Hill unit, valued at $120,000, and $22,000 from insurance claims from the fire and burglary. Her list of assets was meticulous, including $106.55 from her TAB phone account.

  In a clear-cut case of leaving a fox in charge of the henhouse, Philip (and his blameless wife, Josette) were named as the executors.

  Phyllis declared she wanted $3000 and a lounge suite to go to her good friend, Betty Wilson, and a claw-and-ball-foot table to another friend. It is unlikely that any of her furniture survived the fire. She also wanted $10,000 to go to the Charlton Retirement Section of the bush nursing hospital.

  The bulk of the estate, more than $335,000, went to Philip Hocking and his wife. Soon after the will was cleared, Philip gave his son $20,000 for the steam-cleaning machine, as he had earlier promised.

  The Hocking’s marriage did not survive and without the burden of immediate financial pressure, Philip broadened his horizons. He bought a luxury yacht and took up sailing.

  He settled in New Zealand with another partner. After his son was convicted, he rang a lawyer at the Office of Public Prosecutions inquiring about the result.

  Phyllis’s brother, Bill Wannan, is a prolific author and a respected journalist, who has used his logic and curiosity to solve many mysteries – including finding the Petrovs, the Russian spy couple who made headlines during the Cold War.

  Mr Wannan has no doubt that the murder was planned by Philip Hocking. ‘Brent killed Phyllis but what was his motivation? What was there for him to gain and who could possibly pay him to do it? Philip was the only one who would gain from her death.

  ‘Justice has only half been done and the real instigator is still at large and that seems wrong.’

  Philip’s daughter, Rachael, also has no doubt that the real instigator has escaped justice. ‘He is incredibly evil,’ she says of her own father.

  And the detective, Charlie Bezzina? He said that while there was not sufficient evidence to charge Philip with murder at present, he was a patient man.

  ‘We have not given up hope. It is our view that this case is not closed. Murders don’t go away.’

  CHAPTER 4

  Given up for dead

  He showed them a small box. Inside was a human finger.

  ANDREW and Frank MacGregor were twins, but they were always different. One grew up to be a policeman, while the other became a career criminal, working for one of Australia’s most prolific car-stealing gangs.

  It came as no great surprise that Frank MacGregor made a living as a thief – he had been stealing for as long as anyone could remember. ‘Right from the age of six, he would steal different things from me and other members of the family,’ brother Andrew would recall, much later.

  But, in late October 1972, Frank was growing tired of living on the fringes. He had just turned 25 and he planned to reform.

  He had already moved his young wife and baby son to Orange, New South Wales, and planned to settle interstate to try to cut links with the sophisticated, stolen-car ring that employed him.

  He didn’t want to spend the rest of his life waiting to be arrested. He wanted to confess, do his time and then try to start again.

  But violent criminals, and possibly some corrupt police, had a vested interest in making sure that young Frank MacGregor remained silent – forever.

  Because MacGregor was convinced the man who controlled the ring was paying a corrupt detective inside the stolen motor vehicle squad, he needed to find a policeman who would not sell him out. It was then he turned to his twin brother.

  On 3 November, 1972, Frank drove out to Andrew’s home in the Melbourne suburb of Research, and confessed that he was a professional car thief and wanted out.

  Andrew had suspected for some time that his brother, a pastry cook and driver, was supplementing his income from robberies.

  In 1969, Andrew had bought a Valiant sedan and Frank said he could get him four mag wheels, complete with tyres, for $40. You didn’t need to be a trained policeman to know that at that price, the wheels had to be hot.

  A year later, Frank was arrested and charged with shop breaking and stealing. What made it worse was that Frank had kept the stolen property in a flat he was renting from Andrew.

  But that was all in the past. As Andrew MacGregor sat and listened to Frank tell his story, anger and suspicion gave way to sympathy. Even though Andrew was a policeman, his first reaction was that his brother should just pack up and run, rather than make a detailed statement to detectives. ‘I had my doubts, but he wanted to confess before he left Victoria,’ he was to recall much later.

  For almost thirty years, many were to believe it was a fatal mistake.

  IN the years before speed cameras, graphic road safety campaigns and petrol prices around $1 a litre, locally built V8 sedans with fat tyres and racing stripes were the glamor cars of Australia. Before the Formula One Grand Prix, the premier motor car race was Bathurst, and the battle was between ‘The Big Two’ – Ford and Holden.

  Both companies built high-performance cars and sold them to the public under the badges of Monaro, Torana and the brutish GT Falcon.

  There was a huge market for these street-racing cars. They were sought after by young men who were often prepared to buy through a network of backyard dealers and part-time mechanics.

  In Melbourne, a man with a knack with motors and a bent for quick money saw a lucrative market in rebuilding ‘hot’ hot cars and selling them to those who wanted to drive around suburban streets or country race circuits, at speed.

  His name was David Cottrell.

  According to police, Cottrell recruited a crew to steal vehicles to order and they specialised in the high-performance Australian cars. Their most popular target was the GT Falcon with its huge 351 cubic-inch motor.

  Cottrell’s team leader was Kevin Angell, a hard man with Hollywood good looks and a back-alley reputation for violence.

  Angell knew cars and drove his own head-turning, jet black Holden ute with a 350 Chev motor. Angell recruited a thief he knew and liked – a young pastry chef called Johnny Morrow. They needed another driver and Morrow recommended his mate, Frank MacGregor.

  They rented a small farm on the outskirts of Melbourne near Gisborne, and drove the stolen cars to sheds on the property where they would strip them.

  ‘Then they dumped the shell of the car in the bush not far from where they were living,’ according to a detective who worked on the group.

  Detectives said Cottrell would get a new shell from his contacts in the insurance industry and rebuild cars from the cannibalised stolen vehicles. Angell would take the orders from Cottrell on what model car was wanted, Morrow would do the break-in, while MacGregor was the team driver.

  They would use a screw driver to spring a side vent window, flick the lock and then use jumper leads to start the motor.

  A man called Barry Jones – a salesman, not the politician – was to lose his powerful purple Ford GTHO after leaving it parked and locked in Swanston Street.

  The next time he saw his one-year-old car it was just a shell sitting outside the Macedon police station. ‘When I saw the car it was stripped of the motor, wheels and all removable parts.’

  Police from the stolen car squad were well aware of the activities of David Cottrell, but lacked hard evidence to press charges. They needed an insider to turn against him – but at what cost?

  The man they needed was Frank MacGregor. The problem was that MacGregor didn’t want to talk to the stolen car squad, because he believed one of the detectives was on Cottrell’s payroll and the information would bounce straight back to the syndicate head.

  It may
have seemed paranoid, but the paranoid are not always wrong.

  ANDREW MacGregor decided to drive his brother to the Fitzroy police station where he worked in the uniform section. There Frank could repeat his story in front of detectives – well away from Russell Street headquarters and the stolen car squad.

  ‘Frank told me that he was scared about what he was going to do,’ Andrew said.

  The MacGregor family had already been shattered by murder. The twins’ elder sister, Heather Peake, had been shot dead in front of her two children in Waterdale Road, Heidelberg, on 3 March, 1967 – her 24th birthday. The killer then committed suicide.

  When Fitzroy detectives were told the story, they quickly realised Frank MacGregor could be the star witness in a major prosecution against a national stolen car ring, and the investigation would have to be run by specialists.

  If MacGregor was having second thoughts it was now too late. At 2.45pm on Friday, 3 November, Senior Detective John Beever left his office at the stolen motor vehicle squad in Russell Street, to talk to MacGregor at the Fitzroy police station.

  Beever walked in and said, ‘We are from the stolen car squad. I believe you wish to see us.’

  MacGregor answered: ‘Yes. I’ve knocked a few cars off and I want to get it off my chest.’

  He soon found himself in a car heading to the place he had tried to avoid. He would soon be making his long statement in the cramped rooms of the stolen car squad. If Cottrell had an insider in the office he would quickly hear that MacGregor was talking. It was 7pm when MacGregor began his formal interview. He gave details of how Cottrell’s gang worked.

  ‘We took the motor, gear box, seat trim and all removable parts off the car,’ he said.

  Beever: ‘What did you do with the parts you stripped from the car?’

  MacGregor: ‘They were taken by Kevin Angell and sold.’

  Beever: ‘Who is Kevin Angell?’