Underbelly 4 Read online

  The salesman at the front counter was able to give a detailed description of the James Sweetin, the man buying the equipment. More than that, he was able to slip out and jot down the man’s car number.

  It was a maroon Subaru station wagon registered to a nondescript company. Further investigations found the car had recently been pulled over by police on a routine traffic check. The driver was Peter Pilaranos, whose name meant nothing to McCulloch at the time.

  Although the two men had not met, this was to be a pivotal moment in their lives. In a strange way, it would consume both of them and cost them their careers.

  McCulloch returned to his office and briefed his sergeant, who considered there was sufficient information to justify an immediate investigation, code-named Cane. The trail led to Pilarinos’s huge home, set on three large blocks in the eastern suburb of Doncaster.

  At 4.35am on 13 July, 1992, McCulloch went through the garbage in the wheelie bin left outside and found a ripped up note in an empty dog food tin.

  He stuck it together and saw it was an amphetamines recipe with prices next to the chemicals. But next to methylamine was the value of $0.00.

  Later, police were to find Pilarinos didn’t need to pay for methalymine because he had stolen it from the Attwood storage dump. His only cost was to pay off Hicks.

  Police started to monitor James Sweetin’s phone at his house in Ferntree Gully. They expected it would be a text book operation.

  But on 29 September Sweetin told a drug associate, Ken Milton, on the telephone that he was about to find out if the line was tapped. When he rang back he was in no doubt. ‘Don’t say my name, treat your rear vision mirrors like guardian angels, treat this thing like everybody is listening.’

  Police secretly broke into the gang’s amphetamines lab in Ferntree Gully next day. It had already been packed up into storage boxes. McCulloch knew he had been sold out and Operation Cane was terminated.

  Some police are able to shrug their shoulders at corruption. Lachlan McCulloch was not one of them. He started a one-man war against Pilarinos that would last years.

  He launched Operation Austin in 1995 but, again, Pilarinos was warned off. In 1996 he worked on Operation Redalen which resulted in Sweetin being caught at a lab.

  Finally, Sweetin confessed to McCulloch who had sold him out during Operation Cane.

  It was Kevin Hicks.

  SOMETIMES the police who go bad are high-flyers. Such as the notorious former NSW detective, Roger Rogerson, who helped solve some of Australia’s most baffling crimes before being exposed as bent. Police like Rogerson tend to be brave to the point of recklessness and appear to live for their job before they turn bad.

  But Kevin Hicks was not that type – he was a plodder, and a lazy one at that.

  He was twenty years old when he left his hometown of Hamilton in Victoria’s western district to join the police force in Melbourne in 1974. For a big country lad it offered security. You faced the sack only if you were crooked and caught red handed, as he was to find from his own bitter experience.

  In the sixth squad trained in 1974 Hicks was middle of the road and showed no signs of being highly motivated or highly involved. His first eight years on the road did nothing to suggest he would be a late bloomer or a charismatic leader.

  So it was a surprise when he put in for the tough major crime squad in the early 1980s, and an even bigger one that he was accepted. He was to become involved in hunting some of the country’s most dangerous men, including Pavel Marinoff – ‘Mad Max’ – the man who shot six police in 1985-1986. He was seen as brave enough but by no means a star investigator.

  ‘He was a naive country lad. He was a good bloke but not a real hard worker,’ a former major crime squad detective said.

  ‘He sort of just fell into the lifestyle.’

  The ‘lifestyle’ was the major crime squad’s notorious work practices – referred to euphemistically as ‘work hard, play hard.’ At least Hicks got it half right.

  With his curly hair and round face he became known as ‘Koala Bear’ because there were already detectives nicknamed Bear and Polar Bear in the squad.

  A former major crime squad detective, Peter Spence, who was to give character evidence for Hicks in court, said that after chasing some of the state’s most dangerous criminals squad detectives would sometimes go to ‘lunch’ and drink until 5am the next day.

  Another colleague said Hicks eventually found work to be a tiresome distraction from drinking.

  One of the duties of the major crime squad was to host police from around the country who would descend on Melbourne during the Cup Carnival each spring.

  Officially, this was to log the movements of gangsters who went to the races. Unofficially, it was an excuse to binge drink for weeks.

  ‘For about a month a year we were called the Ghurkas because we took no prisoners,’ one was to recall.

  Added to this was constant visits from detectives who expected to be taken out on the town. Many in the squad tired of the constant drinking and wanted to catch crooks. Hicks wasn’t one of them. He was, rather, a crook who was tired of occasionally working and wanted to catch another drink.

  While he was the longest serving member of the squad he had long since stopped being productive. He was made unofficial social secretary and his full time duties largely revolved around entertaining squad guests and ‘getting on the piss.’

  He became lethargic and withdrawn but he didn’t seek, nor was offered, counselling. According to Spence, Hicks’ marriage broke up because of his lifestyle.

  His police diary would show ‘licensing duties’ nearly every third day – a code for pub crawls. His arrest record was lamentable. He made only one arrest in almost two years and, despite repeated warnings, he refused to lift his work rate.

  The major crime squad was running out of control. It had a squad lunch in an outer-suburban hotel that ended in chaos after a drunken detective began to head-butt members of the public in the men’s toilet. There were further arguments because the detectives believed the meal should be free, despite the protests of the licensee.

  By late 1991 it was all too much, or too little.

  Hicks was sacked from the ‘majors’ and moved to the drug squad as assistant property steward in January, 1992. For an operational detective it seemed a massive slap in the face to be made a clerk to keep him out of mischief.

  In reality, he was given the keys to the lolly shop.

  MOST detectives knew Hicksy. They all drank in the police club or the old City Court Hotel. He was seen as rock solid, quiet but staunch.

  Most thought he had been shafted by being moved from the major crime squad and everyone in the drug squad tried to help him recover his collapsed self esteem.

  ‘He was a lost soul. I thought he was like a big, dumb teddy bear,’ observed a detective who worked at the drug squad at the time.

  ‘He would come downstairs with his mug of coffee and go from crew to crew for a chat. We all talked to him about our jobs because we thought he missed the action. Now we know he was selling us out.’

  While no-one suspected the affable property steward there were clear problems in the drug squad. A surveillance photo of Sweetin that McCulloch had stuck on his locker was stolen.

  Promising jobs would turn cold and some targets seemed uncannily able to anticipate police actions.

  In 1993 Australia’s biggest amphetamines manufacturer, John William Samuel Higgs, was preparing for a big ‘cook’ but he cancelled it suddenly, telling his subordinates he knew that police were about to launch a blitz.

  In a major drug investigation, code-named Operation Pipeline, an undercover policeman was at the point of buying three machine guns when his target went cold. The criminal moved to Sydney and would not deal with the undercover. It was clear the job had been sold out from within.

  There were a series of internal investigations but the rat in the ranks was not uncovered.

  Meanwhile Kevin Hicks, the devasta
ted major crime squad detective, was making a comeback of sorts. He seemed to be taking his job quite seriously.

  When he arrived at the squad Hicks had been struggling with alimony payments, as his marriage had broken up three years years earlier. In police circles his battered 1975 Ford station wagon was a standing joke, often sitting in the no-standing zone outside the old watch-house in Russell Street for up to a week because he could not afford to fill the tank.

  But he was to buy a Mitsubishi V6 four-wheel-drive and a top class motorcycle and took his girlfriend to Disneyland, Hawaii and California for eight weeks on an expensive holiday.

  He bought into a racehorse and seemed to be doing well on the punt. Fellow police, suspicious of almost everyone except one of their own colleagues, apparently thought his luck had changed and he was getting his life back together.

  Not for a moment did they think the quiet man was talking to the wrong people. If anyone suspected the truth, they weren’t sharing it.

  Hicks, meanwhile, was looting the containers he was paid to protect, recycling the drugs and chemicals seized by his drug squad mates that he chatted with every day. He was selling out jobs, risking the lives of undercover police and informers.

  Years in the major crime squad had given Hicks an impressive network of criminal contacts. One of those was Peter Pilarinos, a dangerous criminal with ambitions to be a crime boss. Many detectives knew the Pilarinos family well and some of the serious crime squads held their social nights at a nightclub owned by his brother. Some detectives had worked the door as a part-time job.

  But most detectives saw Peter for what he was: a manipulator with no scruples. ‘He is an arrogant bastard who believed he was invincible,’ one detective said.

  In early 1992, Pilarinos wanted to manufacture amphetamines. His cook, James Sweetin, said they would have trouble finding the vital ingredient – methylamine – but Pilarinos said he had a tame copper who could provide what they needed.

  Hicks met Pilarinos in the Aegean Restaurant in Brunswick Street, Fitzroy. No-one needed to sell the idea to Hicks. He was quite prepared to hand over the keys to the compound to and describe where the chemicals were sorted.

  Pilarinos, Sweetin and Milton drove to Attwood and parked away from the compound. Wearing gloves and using keys provided by Hicks they were able to take 150 litres of methylamine without any problem.

  They returned again and again to steal more chemicals, replacing the liquid with Coca Cola and red phosphorous with tile grout.

  But Hicks did more than just provide keys. He stole phenylacetic from the compound and dropped it off in a rubbish bin at a sports ground near Attwood. And there were allegations, although never proven, that he stole truckloads of seized cannabis that should have been destroyed and sold it back through Pilarinos. The gang even stole chemical text books from the lock-up to ensure they were producing speed of the highest quality by the latest methods.

  Hicks kept them up to date on the state of any investigation into his group and tipped them off that police planned to put a secret video camera outside Pilarinos’s home in Doncaster and had Sweetin’s home under surveillance.

  He even told Pilarinos of the evidence gathered by Lachlan McCulloch on his early-morning garbage run.

  The gang needed ketone to make a batch of amphetamines and Pilarinos ordered six litres for $12,000 from an unemployed criminal who owned a sixty-square home in Yarra Glen.

  When it was delivered to a Doncaster house, Hicks staged a fake raid using a bodgy firearms warrant. He gave one of the crooks present a clip over the ear and threatened to arrest all present.

  The man who delivered the drugs was allowed to leave. The chemicals weren’t.

  No-one asked why one detective in a station wagon was conducting raids. They knew they were being ripped off – but who do amphetamines dealers complain to?

  PILARINOS did something that a succession of senior police failed to do. He actually got Hicks to work.

  But the former major crime squad failure didn’t come cheap. Once, before he was about to take his girlfriend to the US in 1993 he demanded extra money for travel expenses.

  Pilarinos and another man met him on a footbridge in Glen Iris and gave him an envelope with cash. Records show that Hicks and his girlfriend left for the US on 3 May that year for an eight-week luxury holiday.

  Pilarinos was pleasant enough to his tame copper when they met, often at the Aegean Restaurant, but behind his back he was filled with contempt, referring to him as ‘that fat pig’.

  While Hicks was running around trying to get rich his work in the property office did not go unnoticed. Senior police were watching – but they didn’t quite catch on. In fact, they were so pleased with Hicks’s efforts he was actually given a commendation for lowering the amount of drugs kept in the containers and therefore reducing the security risk.

  It was only years later that police realised he had been selling them out the back door.

  As part of his rehabilitation Hicks was moved from assistant property steward back to an investigative role in an active crew, a ‘promotion’ he was forced to accept even if it meant he would have to take a pay cut. ‘He just went back to his old ways and did bugger all,’ one colleague said.

  Eventually Hicks transferred to the Benalla CIB where his boss was a Sergeant Denis Tanner.

  Tanner was himself to become the subject of public controversy when he was accused of the murder of his sister-in law, Jennifer, found shot dead in 1984 in a case that was first written off as suicide.

  Tanner and Hicks had both worked at the major crime squad and did not get on. But they found themselves on the same side when Hicks was later charged with corruption offences. Tanner went to a local Chief Inspector to demand to know what was happening with Hicks.

  He was told it related to old matters at the drug squad. The chief inspector then said, ‘It’s amazing how old matters can come back to bite you on the arse.’

  Tanner just looked back and said, ‘Yeah, tell me about it.’

  WHEN a small group of former police turned up to a subdued gathering at The Park Hotel in Abbotsford it was a little like a wake where the corpse turned up to say goodbye.

  It was a Monday and Hicks knew he wouldn’t be seeing his friends on the outside again for at least four years. By that Thursday he would be sitting in the dock of the Supreme Court and then would be taken directly to jail.

  There would be no jury fight. He would plead guilty and ask for mercy.

  It was not a night for big drinking and war stories. It was subdued night when those old mates who turned up deliberately ignored the fact that Hicks had admitted he was a crook.

  But many old associates didn’t arrive. Some were angry because they had believed Hicks’ repeated assurance over two years that he was innocent.

  Many were stunned when Hicks pleaded guilty. His street smart barrister, Joe Gullaci, gave every indication he intended to fight the case before walking back into the Supreme Court after a lunch break to say his client would admit his guilt.

  Legal sources said some thought Pilarinos was about to plead guilty and was looking for a deal. If Pilarinos had rolled over and given evidence against Hicks, the former policeman would have been looking at ten years inside.

  Instead a deal was done and he was told he was likely to get four years. He decided to cut his losses.

  Hicks sat in the dock in the Supreme Court on 9 March, 2000. On either side sat police. To his right was a handful of old friends from the squads. To his left were the investigators who put him there. Another former policeman, Lachlan McCulloch, went to the court to watch the man who sold him out finally admit his guilt.

  Wearing a grey suit, striped tie and gold-framed spectacles, Hicks sat with his head cocked to the right as he listened to the witnesses speak on his behalf. He stood and, with a slight lisp, gave his occupation as a truck driver.

  He didn’t appear to be wearing a watch. He knew he didn’t need one where he was going.


  Gullaci told Justice Hampel how his client had lost his friends, his job and his reputation. ‘Mr Hicks was one of the failures of the system and a victim of it.’

  The defence suggested a non-parole sentence of four years and prosecutor, Bill Morgan-Paylor, said we ‘do not view the defence submission as inappropriate.’

  It ended as an anti-climax. Hicks stood, picked up an old overnight bag at his feet, managed a thin smile and a tired wink at one former colleague before going to jail.

  His bald-headed guard allowed him to shake the hands of his few mates before he was led out to face the first day of the rest of his life.

  But there were no old mates there to shake McCulloch’s hand.

  CHAPTER 5

  Good Cop, Bad Cop

  ‘I came just about last in my squad – twenty-second out of twenty-five. It was not a brilliant start.’

  LACHLAN McCulloch was a young man at a fancy dress party in Carlton when he decided to be a policeman. It was a chat with an unshaven Clint Eastwood lookalike wearing a poncho and smoking a cigar that convinced him.

  The Eastwood character was, in real life, a Victorian homicide squad detective. ‘He said it was just fantastic,’ McCulloch was to recall years later of that pivotal moment in his life. ‘He drove fast cars, caught criminals and just generally had a ball.’

  Back then McCulloch was hardly the type to become the average policeman. And so it proved – he was never average.

  He was to be a driven detective with an enviable arrest record, an acknowledged hero who saved a little boy’s life, an accomplished undercover operative who infiltrated Australia’s most dangerous crime family and, finally, a classic whistle blower who would give his career to fight corruption.

  McCulloch was to become a devoted policeman, but one who did not embrace the culture of the job he loved. For that reason he did what so many of his fellow detectives could not: he turned on one of his own. He didn’t hide from the truth or work around a policeman he suspected of being corrupt.