Underbelly 6 Read online

  He was the type who could excite admiration without envy he was too generous a spirit to hurt other people’s feelings.

  Everyone who knew Billy Gunn has a story about him. He made people laugh but not at the expense of others.

  He was an adventurer – up for anything. Perhaps that is why he was prepared to try ecstasy, even though as a detective with experience in the drug squad he must have known the risk.

  Now Billy Gunn is dead from using ‘recreational’ drugs and friends and family are left only with questions that can never be answered …

  Retired schoolteacher Marlene Gunn sits in the living room of her warm country home surrounded by friends of her dead son. They are there to shield her from intrusive questions and to protect the memory of their best mate.

  In the front yard of the one-hectare property near Bendigo, plastic bags flutter in the blossom-filled almond tree as Mrs Gunn fights a losing battle to protect the nuts from marauding birds.

  Out the back are two dogs, three horses, 16 emus and an ostrich named Diana – two others, Charles and Camilla, recently died.

  It has taken Mrs Gunn months to agree to talk to about Billy. She fears that a story on the way he died will destroy the memories of how he lived.

  At first, police told her to say he died of a heart attack – even though it was common knowledge that it was drugs that killed him. But she now wants to talk – partially as a warning to others and because she wants to share her memories.

  ‘I want to go to every school and tell them the story of my Billy so the children know there is no such thing as safe drugs,’ she says.

  Even though Marlene Gunn’s only son died more than a year earlier she still slips into the present tense when she speaks about him. Her grief is too fresh to treat him as a memory.

  At the rear of the house builders are finishing a double-storey extension, next to the 100-year-old stone dairy. The top room will be set up with her son’s most prized possessions. Although it is still just a shell it is already known as ‘Billy’s Room’.

  On her mantle piece is his police graduation photo, his police badge, a police bear and sporting trophies. On the wall are two picture boards from his mates in Mildura and Bendigo. In most of the snaps he is smiling broadly and surrounded by friends on cruise ships, in the outback, at weddings and parties. They are shots of young people in love with life. There is a picture of Billy taken just after he has finished a university exam. He looks tired but content. Within 48 hours he would be dead.

  One picture board is titled simply: ‘The Legendary Billy Gunn.’

  MARLENE GUNN graduated from teachers’ college and in 1965 was posted to Mildura High School, where she taught French, art and history.

  A fellow member of staff was Geoffrey Gunn, a maths and science specialist. They married two years later and had three children over the next six years – Debbie, Geoffrey William and Tracy.

  Marlene resigned from teaching because Geoff Gunn wanted his wife – almost 20 years his junior – to stay home and look after the children.

  He was a traditional man in a conservative era who liked a fried breakfast, a cooked lunch and a three-course dinner. He tried to change after his first heart attack and managed to modify his diet, but he couldn’t bear to give up smoking. He was 52 when the second heart attack killed him. His wife was 34 and Billy just eight.

  The family moved to Bendigo, where Billy went to Maiden Gully Primary and then Golden Square High. Most people lose touch with schoolmates but Gunn was to stay close to them long after they left school.

  ‘They are a unique group,’ Marlene Gunn muses as she sits with some of them, drinking green tea.

  After year 12, Gunn began a nursing degree at Bendigo but within months he left. He told Marlene, ‘Mum, this isn’t for me’.

  He briefly worked at a home for the blind before joining the police force. He was 18 and graduated in May, 1988. He fell in love with the job. Typically, Billy’s enthusiasm and his persuasiveness led two of his mates to follow him into the force.

  He was first stationed at Fitzroy and received an official commendation after arresting a violent burglar. In Hollywood-style they both ended up in a swimming pool as the housebreaker tried to unholster the policeman’s revolver before Gunn finally overpowered him.

  After more than a year at Fitzroy, he transferred to Castlemaine, then spent five years back at Mildura – the town of his childhood.

  He served two years in uniform in Mildura before his superiors saw in the relaxed and popular Gunn the potential for a first-class undercover operative.

  For 15 months, until December, 1993, Gunn worked plain clothes with Mildura Special Duties. His file noted: ‘Gunn’s duties at this unit included long, protracted target-orientated drug investigations. During this time Senior Constable Gunn completed the Covert Investigation Course and commenced working as an undercover operative.

  ‘Gunn was a particularly hard-working and dedicated member. Gunn has an infectious personality with an easy, laidback style which makes him particularly well-suited to this type of work.’

  Many young police on shift work succumb to a lifestyle marked by stress, broken sleep and a diet of fast food and alcohol.

  But perhaps because Billy’s father and uncle died prematurely from heart attacks he maintained a strict fitness regime.

  Senior Detective Wayne Woltsche was one of Gunn’s best friends in the police force. The pair shared a unit together in Mildura for nearly three years.

  According to Woltsche, Gunn prepared healthy meals to take to the station and went to a local gym nearly every day. He played football with the Mildura Football Club, played squash twice a week and regularly rode his bike – taking part in the annual Mildura to Warrnambool charity ride.

  At 185 centimetres and 77 kilograms, he was tall, fit and good-looking. ‘He would walk down the street and turn heads. Not just the daughters but the mothers as well,’ Marlene recalled.

  In 1995, Gunn joined the drug squad where he continued his undercover work.

  The drug squad and Gunn were a perfect fit. He liked long-term investigations and, according to colleagues, carried out several major sting operations.

  In one case as a drug dealer started to escape by driving off in his Mercedes, Gunn put his arm inside to try and grab the keys. The driver then closed the electric window trapping the detective’s arm. Gunn had no choice but to run with the car as it headed towards a gate post. Just as he was about to lose his arm, back-up police moved in to create a road-block and managed to stop the car only metres from the post.

  His drug squad boss, Superintendent Dave Newton, wrote that Gunn was ‘a good team player and displays potential for promotion’.

  After nearly three years in the squad, Gunn told Woltsche he wanted to work as a detective in a division to gain more general investigative experience. His friend suggested they could work together at the busy Prahran station.

  ‘Since Billy transferred to Prahran CIU (Criminal Investigation Unit) I worked with him extensively. Billy has maintained his high work ethic and was always the first to help with investigations and advice,’ Woltsche said.

  Some police fall for the trap of becoming insular. They work with cops and socialise with each other, eventually developing a siege mentality where they trust few people outside of policing.

  But, according to friends, Gunn always remained balanced. ‘Billy made friends with everybody he met and could talk to anyone from any walk of life. Billy had a large circle of friends ranging from his childhood mates through to people he met since being back in Melbourne,’ Woltsche said.

  ‘Billy was often out at various functions and get-togethers. He was the life of the party and regularly held the floor with his dancing ability.’

  The handsome Gunn would sometimes arrive at functions dressed as a nerd – wearing thick glasses, false buck teeth and a short-sleeved 1970s safari suit.

  But he wasn’t just a party animal and, like many career police, Gunn beg
an part-time tertiary studies. He enrolled in a marketing degree at RMIT and adapted easily to the extra demands of lectures two nights a week.

  His boss at Prahran, Detective Senior Sergeant David Martin, saw Gunn as a potential leader and wanted him to sit the sergeant’s exam but the younger policeman said he wanted to concentrate on his external studies first. When he did the police exam he wanted to excel, he told Martin.

  ‘My personal observations of Geoffrey William Gunn was that he had an infectious and dynamic personality, with a finelyhoned sense of humour, and as such, made friends easily. Geoffrey had a very good work ethic and I would regard him as being one of the better detectives at the office.’

  He said his co-workers were shocked at his death.

  ‘Geoffrey never gave any indication he was using recreational drugs, with the exception of alcohol. He was an occasional drinker, but I never saw him affected, nor did it affect his work performance.’

  Woltsche would tell investigators: ‘I have always held Billy to be one of my closest friends. At no time during the 11 years that I have known him have I ever seen him use any drugs whatsoever.

  ‘Billy has never spoken to me about using any drugs. During the past couple of years I have not seen any changes in the way Billy behaved which may have been drug-related. At no time have I ever had cause to question Billy’s integrity either professionally or privately. Billy has always been held in high esteem by his friends, colleagues and superiors.’

  Gunn’s friends from Bendigo and in the force say they had no idea that the man they admired was falling for the trap of experimenting with drugs.

  But one old friend did.

  Jamie Frank Marciano and Billy Gunn had been friends for 10 years from their days in Mildura, so when Marciano moved to Melbourne in 1999 to manage a bar in South Yarra it was natural they would team up again.

  ‘I knew that Billy was an occasional user of ecstasy,’ he was to state. ‘I had been aware of this since about November 2000. I have seen Billy take ecstasy in tablet form. On a number of these occasions I was present with and saw Billy take ecstasy tablets.

  This would usually occur in a party setting among groups of friends. Billy had many friends outside of the police force. I would estimate that in the time between November, 2000, to the time of his death, I would have seen Billy take ecstasy tablets on about five occasions.

  ‘I do not know where Billy sourced his ecstasy tablets from. He did not speak about this. People generally do not.’

  Even after his good friend died from drugs, Marciano still seemed unaware of the risks. ‘Ecstasy is a common recreational drug among young people who frequent nightclubs and bars. It is easily accessible. Ecstasy is not a drug that makes a person lose control. It merely gives you a lift and makes you feel good,’ he told police.

  Gunn had been living with his girlfriend in Armadale but was ready for a change. A fellow RMIT student he had known from Mildura told him her sister, Catherine Taylor, was also looking for a new house.

  In early May, 2001, the two moved into a renovated cottage in Fairchild Street, Abbotsford. Just days before he died Gunn rang his mother to say he was happy in the new house with Catherine Taylor. He told her: ‘This is going to work mum – she’s fun.’

  WHEN Martin James Foard arrived at Melbourne Airport from Brisbane on Saturday June 16, 2001, he knew he had already secured a backpacker’s first priority – a free bed.

  Catherine Taylor had met Foard three years earlier when he was in Australia and she had gone with him to pubs and clubs later, when she was in England. Foard had been in Australia for six months; he knew he would be welcome in Taylor’s new home when he got to Melbourne.

  Around 8.30am he took an airport bus to Spencer Street and a train to North Richmond before walking about 500 metres to the Fairchild Street cottage.

  About 2pm, Taylor took Foard to the local pub, the Terminus, a kitsch-cool hotel in Victoria Street filled with old bar stools, pinball machines, opportunity shop art – including a portrait of Prince Phillip – and a small black pool table lined with fake fur. I took him to the Terminus simply because it is local and groovy.’

  There they met Gunn. He had planned to go to Bendigo to visit his mother but had missed his lift. The day before he had finished a university exam and was now free to celebrate.

  ‘Cath introduced me to her flat-mate named Billy Gunn. During the afternoon I had a few drinks with Billy and during this time he gave me a pink tablet, which I believed to be ecstasy,’ Foard later told police.

  The pink tablet gave me the sense of well-being, clammy hands and hot flushes which are the normal effects of ecstasy.’

  What remains unexplained is why Gunn would give a stranger a pill that normally cost between $50 and $80. And why a serving detective would be so reckless as to risk criminal charges and the sack by passing over illegal drugs in a pub? Some of Gunn’s friends still believe it was Foard who provided the drugs.

  The next morning Taylor went to a friend’s for a child’s birthday party and left Foard and Gunn at home.

  According to Foard, they settled in to watch the football on television. ‘At this time we had a couple of VB stubbies each and Billy asked me if I wanted a tablet. I believed he was talking about ecstasy and Billy returned to the lounge room shortly after, handing me a small blue tablet that had ‘CK’ marked on it.

  ‘I immediately took this tablet. I saw Billy have one too, and we continued drinking VB stubbies. This blue tablet made me feel happy and about one to two hours after taking this tablet Billy left before returning to the lounge room with a small pink tablet. This tablet had no markings on it and Billy handed me one. I did not see Billy consume a pink tablet or any other tablets apart from the blue one.’

  The effects of the pills and the beer overwhelmed Foard, who vomited. It may have saved his life.

  Foard rang a friend, Brendan Sheedy, who came around for a drink. Later, Taylor returned home and Marciano also arrived.

  Gunn offered to cook dinner. Marciano later told police, ‘Billy and I went down to the local supermarket to get some food to prepare a meal. We also purchased a bottle of vodka, a bottle of lime and two bottles of soda water and returned to his home and prepared a meal.’

  Marciano brought a small bag of cannabis with him to the house and most of those present shared a joint. No one seemed worried about smoking marijuana in front of a detective.

  Gunn cooked a chicken stir-fry. They continued to drink and play cards during the night.

  According to Taylor, ‘I would not describe his state as intoxicated, but I would say he was affected by alcohol. He was able to play cards but did stagger a bit when he went to bed.’

  According to Sheedy, ‘Bill appeared a bit stoned.’

  About 11.30pm Gunn headed to his bedroom saying he had work the next day. Sheedy said, ‘Prior to leaving, Bill was actively involved in the conversation and was telling stories and jokes.

  ‘He was speaking clearly and nothing appeared to be abnormal with his thought process. My first impression on spending a few hours with Bill on the Sunday night was that he was a fun bloke, enjoyed mixing socially with people and appeared to enjoy life.’

  Taylor woke next morning and prepared for work about 8am. ‘I hadn’t heard Billy get up yet and thought that he was working that day. I popped my head into his room and saw that Billy was still fully clothed, lying on his bed.’

  ‘I could see that Billy was breathing but his breathing appeared a little laboured. I called out to him to wake him but he did not rouse.

  ‘I thought Billy was in heavy sleep from the effects of the alcohol.’

  ‘Mart was up at this time and I told him I could not wake Billy. Mart and I both went to Billy’s room and I again called out to him. Again I could not rouse him so I asked Mart to keep an eye on him. I left for work at about 8.40am.’

  But Foard was not worried enough to do anything. He thought Gunn was snoring due to the previous night’s alcohol and drugs. As t
he unconscious detective lay dying, his house guest made a cup of tea and went back to bed.

  About 45 minutes later, Taylor rang and again asked Foard to check on Gunn.

  ‘I hung the telephone up and entered Billy’s room. I could see that his skin was pale and his eyes were slightly open. His skin was cold, his chest was not moving and I could not feel any pulse.’

  He tried to ring Taylor but could not get through and then rang Sheedy. Finally he rang 000 and the operator told him to put Gunn on the floor and on his side. But it was too late. He was dead at 32.

  The ambulance officer at the scene had no idea his patient was a police officer until he glanced at his bedside table and noticed a police badge.

  At first, they assumed it was a heart attack – that is, until Foard told police they had been taking ecstasy.

  In the front right pocket of Gunn’s jeans, police found a plastic bag that held seven blue and five orange tablets.

  Another question is, why a policeman with Gunn’s reputation for integrity would possess drugs valued at nearly $1000 for private use? And, as an occasional user, why did he want so many tablets?

  Later forensic tests showed the orange tablets (described by Foard as pink) contained ecstasy but that the blue tablets were a deadly mix of morphine (a narcotic, like heroin) and methamphetamine.

  The blue tablets are known as ‘pseudo-ecstasy’ and are dangerous fakes often produced in backyard ‘speed labs’ and filled with a range of chemicals that will give the user any sort of a ‘high’. They came from the sorts of labs Gunn had busted during his years in the drug squad.

  Gunn was an experienced detective who knew the dangers of drugs. But, like so many occasional users, he ignored the risk that one bad pill could kill him.

  His mother remains shattered and confused: ‘Billy always looked after himself; he ate well and exercised, he even hated coffee.’

  BILLY Gunn prided himself on not letting people down. He promised his family to share Christmas with them so, after one shift, he drove six hours to his sister’s home in the Mallee. He grabbed a few hours sleep on the couch before her excited children woke him at dawn.