Underbelly 5 Page 7

  MacGregor: ‘He is the bloke who used to order the parts he wanted.’

  Beever: ‘Before you stole the car did he tell you exactly what was required?’

  MacGregor: ‘Yes. He told us the make and model of the car he wanted.’

  Beever: ‘What did Angell do with these parts?’

  MacGregor: ‘He sold them to David Cottrell.’

  Almost six hours later, MacGregor had heavily implicated his fellow thieves Angell, Morrow and Cottrell.

  In the early 1970s, there were no witness protection programs. Informers mostly had to fend for themselves.

  There were no special deals for MacGregor. He was charged with stealing 13 cars and three motorbikes, and told, if he was to plead guilty and give evidence against the other members of the gang, he could expect a lighter sentence. Only then would he have finally buried his old life and be free to start a new one.

  But within hours of arriving in Pentridge jail, Frank MacGregor began to fear his former mates had been tipped off. He had been identified as an informer and was left without protection.

  If he had any doubts that he was at risk, they disappeared when he was called to an office in Pentridge. Waiting for him was a solicitor, in the company of Angell and Morrow.

  According to MacGregor, the solicitor told him he would be pleading not guilty to the charges and there would be no deals with the police.

  A few mornings later, he woke in the remand section dormitory and found a note with half a razor blade attached. It said that, if he talked, the other half of the blade was for his two-year-old son.

  Within a week of going to the police, he was starting to think he might have to plead not guilty and retract his statement just to survive. He asked his twin to provide bail so he could get out of Pentridge, but even on the outside, he remained under pressure to change his story.

  Andrew MacGregor had to use his family home and savings as security for bail. On 22 November, Andrew was on his way to police band practice, and dropped Frank at the city watchhouse to pick up a few possessions that had been taken from him when he was charged, almost three weeks earlier.

  Frank then went over to see Beever in Russell Street. Beever, now retired, was to recall of the meeting: ‘He was a terrific bloke. He wanted to come clean and cleanse his soul. We knew of Cottrell and we were clapping our hands (that MacGregor provided the breakthrough).’

  MacGregor assured John Beever he would not back down and intended to plead guilty at the next hearing, in two days.

  ‘He was uptight after the razor blade. He was on bail and we had a coffee. He said he was ready to tip a bucket (on the stolen car gang).’

  But it seemed that others knew they could not afford to let MacGregor turn against them. When he walked out of Victoria’s largest police station he disappeared.

  When the frightened car thief didn’t appear before court on 24 November, Beever knew his case was unravelling. He decided to move on Cottrell immediately.

  According to Beever, Cottrell didn’t appear worried when he was raided. ‘Cottrell called me aside and told me that there was a contract out on the life of Frank MacGregor.’ Police found a loaded .22 rifle under a bed in Cottrell’s house.

  Beever was so concerned that his witness had gone missing he contacted the homicide squad and told them he had ‘grave fears’ for MacGregor.

  But little was done to try to find the missing man. His picture was widely circulated in police circles and many thought he would soon surface on his own.

  He didn’t.

  Although Beever, an astute and honest detective, wrote reports expressing his concerns, the case was never given the status of a homicide investigation. No-one seemed to care. To many, MacGregor was just another car thief – dead or alive.

  Despite the official apathy, John Beever had no doubts. ‘I believed he was murdered.’

  According to Beever, who went on to become the head of the armed robbery squad, Cottrell was ‘the number one man in the group. He was a slimy character. He was always very confident and full of bravado. He had the attitude, “You can’t touch me - I’m too good”.’

  A confidential police report on Cottrell stated: This man is a cunning and vicious criminal, who makes the majority of his income from organising the theft and stripping of high-powered cars, mainly GT Falcons. It is doubtful if he has earned many honest dollars in his working life.

  ‘He makes every attempt to find out the Christian names of (police) members dealing with him, and in this way later refers to them as friends when spoken to by other police.

  ‘He has been known to be wired for sound, and care should be taken when questioning him.’

  Twenty years later, another detective suggested Cottrell had not changed. In 1993, he was suspected of being involved in the theft of a loaded semi-trailer worth $500,000. He became a police informer but, as usual, he made promises without delivering.

  ‘There was not one occasion when I can recall that any of his information could be substantiated,’ an intelligence expert was to observe.

  ‘Cottrell is a very cunning, shrewd, manipulative and dangerous criminal, with many contacts around Australia.

  ‘He was a witness in the Fitzgerald Inquiry (into police corruption in Queensland) and, more recently, had been interviewed by investigators assisting the royal commission (into police corruption) in New South Wales. He is a liar, a cheat and a thief and is not to be trusted.’

  Cottrell was born in country NSW just after World War II, lived on a farm in Urana and, by the age of 12, was working part-time at a local garage.

  ‘I was a natural mechanic,’ he said with his characteristic lack of modesty. He eventually moved to Melbourne and bought a wrecker’s yard in Dandenong.

  He was well-known among car and boat racers who came to him for parts. According to a contemporary police report: ‘His friends are all fanatical, high-powered motor car enthusiasts (many of whom) have convictions for car thieving, and also a more than high number of personal friends who have been charged with armed hold-ups. He also bails these persons out.’

  Police believed the Melbourne syndicate was part of a Sydney-based stolen car ring in which ‘a person has been charged with murder as a result of the racket’.

  Without MacGregor, the case against Cottrell collapsed, but the ‘born mechanic’ was soon in trouble again.

  He wanted his former de facto wife to return to him and hired two men to abduct her. But, during the dispute, a shot was fired and the new boyfriend was injured. Cottrell was charged in October 1977 with malicious wounding and sentenced to two years’ jail.

  According to Andrew MacGregor, one of the men said he agreed to the abduction plot because, in his words: ‘The last man to cross Cottrell was Frank MacGregor.’

  While police showed little interest in finding out what happened to MacGregor, stories started to surface as to what had happened to the star witness.

  The most popular theory in the underworld was that Kevin Angell and John Morrow were waiting when MacGregor walked out of the Russell Street police station, and the witness was murdered within three days.

  His body was supposedly dumped in Port Phillip Bay, the Hume Weir, or hidden in a giant concrete pour on the Hume Highway. Angell, the hard man of the crew, was the one alleged to have pulled the trigger.

  Despite the stories, police didn’t bother to ask Angell if he was involved in the murder. By early 1975, they had lost their chance.

  IN January 1975, Shane Duggan and his wife, Veronica, decided to drive to Melbourne from Brisbane. A new friend, a good-looking, second-hand dealer who had recently moved to Queensland, decided to hitch a ride.

  His name was Kevin Angell.

  The couple were happy with the idea. Angell loved to drive and he could share the burden with Duggan. The two men decided they would be able to do the trip non-stop.

  They left around midday on 13 January, and 19 hours later, had just passed Shepparton on the Goulburn Valley Highway.

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bsp; Duggan drove the first eight hours and then Angell took over. At 3am, Duggan slipped back behind the wheel. ‘I was feeling quite well and didn’t feel tired in any way until I got to Shepparton.’

  Veronica was in the back seat while Angell slept in the front passenger seat. Just after 7am, Duggan fell asleep at the wheel, the car hit a white highway marker and then slammed into a tree ten metres off the road.

  Duggan was left stunned and bleeding, his wife had a broken leg and arm.

  A truck driver was the first on the scene and Duggan asked about the condition of his friend. The driver said he was ‘all right’. He lied. Angell was wedged in the wrecked Falcon and was already dead. His throat had been crushed in the smash and the main artery ruptured.

  He was 38 years old.

  ANDREW MacGregor was a policeman for more than 17 years, but had fallen out of love with his former job long before.

  He left in 1985 as a senior constable, bitter at his treatment and savage at the lack of action over his brother’s case. For years, he had made statements inside the force that Frank had been murdered and sold out by a corrupt detective, but nothing was done.

  The former police bandsman went public, writing articles in little-known books and magazines, stating that there had been a cover-up and that no-one would investigate Frank’s disappearance.

  In the 1970s and again in the 1980s, there were vague instructions to investigate the MacGregor case. Internal investigators and homicide detectives were, at different times, assigned the job of finding what happened to a man who had been prepared to give evidence against fellow criminals.

  The reality was, the case was never given any priority. Andrew MacGregor was seen as a nuisance and the matter was allowed to lapse. It appeared to be one of those embarrassing cases that would never be exposed to any objective scrutiny.

  There were too many skeletons in too many cupboards – except the one that mattered.

  But Andrew MacGregor started to read of a case that gave him some hope. It was the murder of Jennifer Tanner, the mother of two, shot dead in her farmhouse at Bonnie Doon, in 1984. The death had, at first, been written off as an implausible suicide, but in 1995 police launched a new investigation that was later to involve Jennifer’s brother-in-law, Detective Sergeant Denis Tanner.

  MacGregor reasoned that, if police were prepared to expose the embarrassing progress of the original Tanner investigation to public scrutiny, perhaps they would do the same in his brother’s case.

  In December, 1998, Andrew MacGregor wrote to the State Coroner, Graeme Johnstone, pleading for help. He asked what he ‘must do to obtain some kind of justice in relation to my brother’s murder and thus remove the “ghost” that haunts our family’.

  Although the coroner passed on the letter to police within a week, little was done to investigate the claims for another year.

  Another file on the MacGregor case was generated and bounced from one office to another before it ended with Detective Sergeant Jim Conomy, on 7 January, 2000.

  The average street-smart detective would try to dodge a file like the one marked MacGregor. It was a case with no leads, no statements, no bodies and no hope.

  Grieving relatives and a curious coroner meant hard work and no rewards – but Conomy was no average detective.

  IN a profession with its share of cynics, Jim Conomy remains an enthusiast. He is a detective who immerses himself in complex cases and, like an eccentric scientist, can become excited by tiny and seemingly obscure discoveries.

  A qualified magician who puts on shows for police Legacy families, Conomy believes every question has an answer. When he is not working on homicide cases, he plays puzzles and practises magic tricks. ‘It keeps the mind sharp,’ he explains.

  He is as likely to baffle a suspect by making coins disappear, as through difficult questions. Once, when interviewing the now-famous standover man, Mark Brandon Read, over a murder, he surprised him with a series of card tricks. His interest in magic reflects in his technique as an investigator. He knows there is always an explanation for the seemingly impossible.

  The real trick is to find it.

  He often treats a difficult homicide case as a glorified scavenger hunt – delighting in finding each small piece of information before he can progress to a conclusion.

  Conomy’s mentor in the homicide squad was John Hill, the respected investigator who committed suicide in September 1993.

  Hill had, controversially, been charged with being an accessory to murder, over his investigation of the police shooting of armed robbery suspect Graeme Jensen, in 1988.

  Even though the charges were found to be baseless, Hill felt his integrity had been destroyed. He shot himself two months after he was charged.

  The death of his best friend deeply affected Conomy. ‘I was taught by the best. John taught me to chase every rabbit down every burrow.’

  After a stint as a lecturer at detective training school, Conomy returned to the homicide squad in December 1999 with specific instructions.

  He was to join the new ‘cold case crew’ – a group of detectives assigned to review unsolved murders and sinister disappearances. He was told to rat through the ‘too hard’ basket and see what he could find.

  Senior police believed Conomy’s eye for detail, and his insatiable curiosity, could help reinvigorate cases that seemed likely to remain mysteries. Some thought that if anyone could pull a few rabbits from his hat, it would be the part-time magician.

  He immediately started an operation into the disappearance of Frank MacGregor, code-named ‘Manly’. Even a born optimist like Conomy must have realised this was the sort of case destined to remain unsolved, but he tried anyway.

  He realised the first thing he needed was a complete, internal investigations department file on the complaints made by Andrew MacGregor, over his brother’s murder. It was missing.

  He then wanted the file on the car-stealing racket, including Frank MacGregor’s original statements from 1972. They were also gone.

  To make matters worse, the police involved in the original investigation and the subsequent internal inquiries had all long since retired.

  Most police would have made a few calls to cover themselves and written a small report. No-one thought Conomy and his partner, Senior Detective David Rae, would be able to find the haystack, let alone the needle.

  In most murder investigations the last step is to interview the main suspect, but in a case as vague as this Conomy thought he would begin at the end and work backwards.

  He decided to interview the only suspect he could find, David Cottrell. In 28 years, Cottrell had never been questioned over MacGregor’s disappearance.

  Life had not been kind to Cottrell. The big wheel in the motor trade and major target of the stolen car squad, had returned to NSW with his health deteriorating.

  At age 57 he found that five childhood attacks of rheumatic fever had left him with a weakened heart. He also had Parkinson’s disease and anxiety neurosis.

  Cottrell was also unlucky in love. He had several intense relationships resulting in fires, shootings and a case where his girlfriend allegedly tried to poison him. He also had one de facto wife strike him, bursting his right eardrum. When Conomy first interviewed Cottrell, the suspect denied even knowing MacGregor.

  But, later, he made a statement in which he softened – suggesting he may have known him but only by a nickname. He was then able to recall a conversation he’d had with Angell in November, 1972.

  He said Angell looked ‘haggard’ and as if he ‘had dropped his bundle about something’. According to Cottrell, Angell had said, ‘I’m having a problem with Egor. He’s made a statement to the cops. I know it’s a fact cause I’ve got a contact in the car squad who’s given me a copy of the statement. I’m going to have to dispose of the problem.’

  Police now believe that Egor was the nickname for MacGregor.

  It was vague at best, and so Conomy and Rae started an international paper chase, in the ho
pe they could find the only other living man who could help – Johnny Morrow, MacGregor’s former friend, who might have been involved in the murder.

  When computer checks produced nothing, the two detectives organised for thousands of documents to be checked by hand.

  They found the police internal investigation documents in police archives, hidden among thousands of other files. They had been stored under the wrong name.

  Conomy then rescued the original stolen car squad file from under the house of a retired detective.

  He went to police records and began to make long and involved checks. He found evidence that a man with Morrow’s wife’s maiden name had been arrested in New Zealand on theft charges in early 1973, months after MacGregor’s disappearance.

  Morrow’s then wife had also quietly moved from the Melbourne suburb of Reservoir to New Zealand, in the early 1970s.

  The full-time detective and part-time magician knew that Morrow was a pastry cook, so he began to ring New Zealand bakeries. He found one where an Australian known as ‘Little Johnny’ had worked.

  What made it more interesting was that ‘Little Johnny’ was an old crook and when he had been drinking, he would tell his workmates he had a huge secret in his past that he would never tell.

  It was enough for Conomy and Rae to head to New Zealand and the tiny mining town of Huntley, about two hours from Auckland.

  With the help of local police, they found Morrow who, not surprisingly, refused to help. Then Conomy produced a videotape from his briefcase and asked the suspect to watch.

  The next thing he saw on the television screen was Andrew MacGregor holding a picture of his brother. Andrew spoke directly to Morrow in a video-taped appeal, specially made to prick his conscience.

  ‘You remember Frank, don’t you? He thought a fair bit of you back then. He said you were a mate … Is it right to see a mate murdered and do nothing about it? How would you feel if it happened to your brother or your children?

  ‘How do you think Frank’s son, young Robert, felt all these years knowing his dad had been murdered, and the murderer is still free? Some life for a kid, isn’t it?