Shot, stabbed and smuggling prison drugs: Claude Robinson Pt.1

The public has had a long held fascination with detectives. Detective see a side of life the average persons never exposed to. I spent thirty four years as a cop. For twenty five of those years, I was catching killers. That's what I did for a living. I was a homicide detective. I'm no longer just interviewing bad guys, staid, I'm taking the public into the world in which I operated. The guests I talk to each week have amazing stories from all sides of the law. The interviews are raw

Thanks Garry, A pleasure to be here.

Well, we always seem to meet in these really formal settings. The first time I met you was at Government House.

There's true and I was the last time I wore.

A suit, a bit of a shing dig with all the politicians and the senior members of the legal fraternity.

It was I remember walking down the long path to the government House and the security the security guards were dressed immaculately, you know, and he asked my name was on the list, and yeah, he gave me directions. And it's quite an imposing you know, with the paintings are huge.

Yeah, it is an imposing building. When I was in the cops, I spent a bit of time there when I was doing close personal protection, anitary protection, and have times there. But it is an intimidating place and it is I got to say, looking around the room, I saw of checking out who's there, And the director of the DPP was there, and there was judges there and politicians there, and I looked around and think, what am

But yeah, I probably felt very very similar there were I remember I think the governor got up and introduced and I just remember her entry into the room and I.

Thought, wow, this is really formal.

Yeah, you know, and she's got up and spoke and yeah it was. And I was sitting there very similar thing, you know, as you said that the former DPP was there, who was in charge of it when I was incarcerating New South Wales.

Yeah, you know, but I thought it was good because that was it was on justice reform and jailing's failing and different things about that. It's healthy to have those people sitting there talking, talking to people like yourself with life experience, people that have been on the other side law me as a cop and getting people's opinions. So it feels progressive.

You know.

The solution involves everyone, you know, I don't. You know, I'm not one of those people. But just because I've lived experience doesn't I don't believe on an expert in.

Anything by my own life, but it does give me an insight.

But you know, I have professional experience, and you have to take into consideration the different perspectives that everyone brings to it. If I look at it just from my perspective, is very narrow and the community is made up of lots of different people and like you said, most of the people there were represented different parts of that community.

And parts of the whole justice system. Yes. Anyway, so Hobknobin, the next time I saw you was at Parliament House. It sounds like we lived the good life and that again was a formal invitation and you did a keynote there and on the back of that, I thought, I've got to get this guy on my catch killers you were very passionate. Do you want to tell us about what you were talking about there and what that function was about at New South Wales Parliament.

Yeah, so I was invited there because I'm part of the Justice reform initiative with Mindy Satory, the amazing Mindisatory. I think that's how I got the invite to the first one.

Yeah. She's a good lady, she is.

I've had a bit to do with her.

Over the years and she knows that I've got lived experience and professional and then I'm very passionate about advocacy about changing the system. So she, you know, called me up and said could you speak you know at Parliament House we've got a couple of lived experience speakers.

Gail was the other one.

And funnily enough, you know, Gaila and I were in rehab together seventeen years ago. So when I as soon as I saw it was Gail and you know, and our journeys have been different, but you know, we started in that rehab coming off methadone together, so pretty amazing. And two and we had had a chat with her about that while we're in Parliament House, you know, speaking.

The message you were trying to get across, because again there was a lot of politicians, senior police there, there was a whole range of people from the justice system.

Yeah.

Look my take on it, especially you know, having that sort of powerful people there was. The economics of imprisonment don't make sense. It's you know, I pay taxes today, you know, And as I spoke about that, you know, every time we imprisoned someone, you know, you wait longer at a hospital because this not a doctor or a nurse at cost us. And I think it's a really bad investment. And I don't believe the community has an understanding of what they the non value for money they get right.

I remember speaking to Tim Watson Monroe. I'm not sure if you know of Tim, a criminal psychologist. He raised that very issue. He said, look, the amount of money you spend on having one person in prison, you could have a full time psychologist assigned to that person helping them get their life in order. So I think we do need to look at that, besides all the other aspects of it. From the fiscal point of view, the cost of keeping people in prison one hundred percent.

And I spoke to that on that very day. You know my service.

So we get funded by DCJ ninety six thousand dollars a year to work with four people twelve weeks each.

And the work that you're doing with those people is that at where's.

That at the Rainbow Lodge here in a city of Sydney. So we work with medium, high and high risk offenders. So those are few and is a great risk of recidivision and returning to custody, so we work with them. And we also work with people on the Wallama List, which is a new initiative for First Nations people in the District Court in New South Wales.

Okay, well, I want to talk about that all in detail, but I also want our listeners to get an understanding of where you're coming from and your lived experience so you haven't always hung out at Parliament House and Government House. It's definitely yeah. So tell us about your upbringing.

So I come from Melbourne originally. I grew up in a big Catholic family. So I'm number five of six kids.

Good Catholics.

Yeah, good Catholics, you know, believe it or not. Altar Boy forced religion. And when I look back on my childhood, what I understand now that led me on the path that I went on was that the message I got really early was that the adults in my life were incongruent. What they said and what they did were two different things. And I'm talking six seven years old. I'd work this out and I found that, for whatever reason, really damaging.

Was sending you mixed messages.

As a child, it was, Yeah, I didn't know where my safety was.

You know, I say to people, you know, I could behave the same way in two days and get two different outcomes. And as a child, I understand now as an adult and the work I do, how damaging that is because it doesn't have any safety.

Yeah, when you break it down, I'm just thinking, in that strange world that you live in as a child, if you're getting inconsistent messages from parents or people in authority. It's acceptable to do that one day and then next day you're in trouble. Yeah, yeah, I can see how it plays with.

You and LinkedIn with the Catholicism.

You know, because my parents were from that where you had to go to church and you know, and I had to be an older boy, and you know, the memories I have from that. I remember where I was an altar boy. On the Sunday, my team played AFL football over the fence and I had to sit in the church and miss the first quarter every week, and I could hear my mates yelling out to me, and that was just such a painful thing because I hated.

I didn't want to be there.

I didn't.

I wasn't an alder boy because I wanted to. I was forced.

And the other thing was that I saw in my community that you know, on a Sunday, everyone went to this church and dressed up and pretended the world was perfect. Yet you know, during the week, they're sleeping with each other, they're bashing their wives, like like I remember going into a mate's house to pick him up one Sunday to go and kick the footy.

Or whatever you do with kids.

The door was off, there was a knife in the wall. It was like it was and I didn't think anything of it, and I just walked down to his room and kicked it, you know, banged on the door, grabbed the footy, and walked out, you know. And I think about even that talking about it, and I just go, well, that's just so insane.

But that's what it was like.

I remember on one occasion going down the street read and I saw a few of the people I knew from church carrying the priest out into the car because he was so drunk. Because they would drop around your house in those days, you know.

Yeah, I look, one thing I don't like in life is hypocrisy. And I don't want to attack the church or agen or whatever, but let's just call it for what it is. Yeah, I don't like the hypocrisy of present one way, but then the real fact you're a completely different person.

Yeah.

I think that fed into the you know, the incongruence of the adults. And then I saw all these and I was like, so the message that I understand now that I got was that the world was hostile. Fuck everyone. You get what you can anyway you can get it, you know. And I started stealing money from my parents when I was seven eight years old to go to the tuck shop and you know, and it just led me down that path.

Yeah, And it's interesting you say that, like stealing. I think, as kids, well I can put my hand up. We all go through that stage where he's an opportunity and you take it. But then you get caught and you think of the consequences, and then you start as you get older, you realize it's wrong. But as a child, you can go off track pretty easy.

Cant I did, And you know, I know went off track because you know, I two of the primary schools I went to, you know, I was expelled from.

Yeah, I saw you. You managed to do two primary schools and two high schools.

I did the high schools.

I can understand, you know, Like I look at my daughter, she's ate, and I just go, how do you get expelled?

How did you get expelled from a primary school?

So the first primary school was the one I'd gone to from prep and was close to my house. I was just so chaotic, you know, my behaviors. I wouldn't do what I was told, and in those days there was corporal punishment. I'd have to sit up the front of the room with my hands on the desk, and he had one of those big wooden meter rulers, the teacher, and it didn't matter who did it, but he turned around and hit me, you know, and like so I just you know again, it was that message, it didn't

Just break this down, that thought. You always get interesting facts on my catch killers, but you got to expelled from a primary school that your mum.

Was a teacher at I did. I did, so my mom's a big effort. Yeah, it is a very big effort.

So I lived in Franks there's not a pretty tough place to grow up. But where my mum taught and where I played footy and went to school was a place called the pines, you know in New South Wales equivalent to eds or man draw to case housing commissioned like you know, when all the houses were pink blue or yellow and lots of burnout cars. And she taught in the school there and it was a tough school.

It had at school.

I put that over the vice principal, mister White and hit him with a cricket bat.

That's pretty good going, how are we?

I would have been like nine or ten.

Yeah, yeah, I look again, like I look at my daughter and I just go, well, what was going on that? I was willing to do that and there so we didn't get the rule there. We got strapped with a thick leather strap called Freddy. And I was so you know, and I led this. I did this into my thirties. But I would go to the principal's office and then go Robinson, what are you doing here?

And I go, well, let's just get it out the way. I drive him nuts, you know, because I thought it's coming. You know, I'll get a couple on credit.

But punish me now because I'm going to do something stupid. When I walk out. But yeah, it's interesting when you look back at school because I went through an era where corporal punishment was there. It was the cane, and there were certain teachers, and I can see it had to be stopped because certain teachers enjoyed it too much. There was teachers that any reason they could think of,

Yeah, And when I look back, you know, the things I remember from then aren't the physical scars, you know, it's the message, the lesson the emotional, you know. And when I tell my story, one of the things that I believed happened for me was you know that I went too you know at home that you.

Know I got in trouble. I was tired. I was bad. I went to school. I was tired. I was bad.

You know, becomes a self fulfilling profit.

So does the police told me I was bad? I went to the courts. They told me I was bad. I dow up in prison. See, in the end, you just couple everyone's says it your males or that's.

Yeah, you do. I think if you get that negative reinforcement in you, it's almost like you just follow the path that your lack of self worth. You got locked up by the cops when you were ten or in trouble with the cops.

Yeah, in the ninten soo again, you know where I grew up, as it was a pretty tough place. So I'd hang out with older kids. And so we're break into cars at night. And yeah, this particular time I break into this and this. You know I must have been so this has been nineteen eighty, you know, so a long time ago. I in those days, you used to be I can't remember the make of the car, but they get me. I could stand on the roof and pop the yeah pop, the things would pop out.

Top the things, break into the car, break into the cars and.

Generally, you know, most of the time we're looking for five bucks or smoke source, you know something. And this particular day, for whatever reason, this guy left his paypacket on the seat and I got the paypack and I think it had six hundred dollars in it, which was a lot of money, a lot of money. I didn't know that he lived in the local sergeant.

Right, So a lot of money and six hundred dollars are going to investigate that, it's probably not too hard.

Well, I remember it because and I split it up with these guys and I think maybe I took one hundred dollars, which is a huge amount of money. And it was we have the Royal Melbourne Show and it was around that time, because I know because I went with my mate the Royal Melbourne Show and came back with you know.

Yeah, where'd you get all that clock?

You know what I mean?

So, yeah, there was no criminal genius involved in it, and so you know I had to with in back those days, you didn't get in trouble.

You didn't go before the courts at that age, so.

I juvenile caution would have been what we can hear a police officer, you've got to gether. The superintendent speaks, you realize what you've done is wrong, Claude, you say yes, and yeah.

This is where you're going to end It's funny, you know, this is where you're going to end up if this keeps. And you know, I just thought, yeah, And it was not that I I wasn't rude or disrespectful to him. And my experience with the police that was, I was never I never had that relationship with him.

I just they were doing their thing. I was doing mine.

You know, when did drugs start to become into your life?

So do you know, due to my family situation, my first escape was sport yep, So I played a lot of sports. I was really good at tennis, you know, I played baseball for Victoria. You know, I played AFL with you know, Nathan Burke, Robert Harvey.

Like really, so you have a potential career path. Yeah.

I played all those sort of sports.

And because I did everything to get out of the house, to not be at home and you know. One of the things I've learned because I have you know, I'm an adict of have addiction.

I get obsessed or focused, so.

That can be beneficial for you.

So, yes, I was really whatever I set my mind. I was really good at you know, you know, I played tennis. I was a really good junior and you know, and that worked for a while, and then me and my mate.

Every when we were grabbed.

This is like in the early eighties, everyone had you know, cooler bar wine cast in the fridge, so you know, we'd be stealing his mums whatever at mosal or whatever and drinking that and then and I stilled it to this day. I don't know why, trying to hold the thing open and pour water back in like they were going to know that we've taken two glasses out of it.

Okay, what age were you around then, twelve something like that?

Quite young at that time. It's a crucial time in kids' lives, isn't it. I see it that a lot of kids you can serve and they're fine, it's that, but they can go off track very quickly. Yeah, just by perhaps being exposed to alcohol or access to different things. Definitely.

And I think, you know, I grew up in the seventies, this is the early eighties. And you know another thing, My grandmother was the Catholic patriarch, you know, and on Christmas Day, Christmas night we go day, we go to the other grandma's, but we go to my father's mother's

The role models there, the people you're looking up to at the time. It's just a lifestyle of culture that is easy to fall into. You played in some bands or you been in the music as well.

I did so I after I started drinking and you know, smoking pot, because that gave me the sense of being okay.

I didn't want to do sport anymore because that took hard work.

So I got into music, you know, because I had some mates who are into music. And again, you know, because with that addictive personality, I set my mind to it, you know, and we did pretty well, you know, for how young we were. When I look back now, you know, we were playing in pubs at sixteen and seventeen to three or four hundred people, and well.

That would have been a bit of a high for you at that stage.

It was it was you know, getting up on stage, it was an adrenaline rush.

And you know, I smoked pot from that pot. I smoke. This is normal. Everyone did, and you know, and then we drink, and I think that was the other thing though, So.

You know, when I drunk, I've never would have beer in the fridge, like I would never come home and have a beer like I drunk to get pissed.

Yeah, it's interesting that we'll speak more on the addiction and your understanding of it. But I see people like that. I have friends, yeah, throughout my life that, yeah, I can go home and have a drink all each night and it's not like it's why I say, it's not an addiction, but it's not a problem in any way.

Well, I you know, I realize looking back that I drank it for the effect, not for the enjoyment. Yeah, you know, I would rather have a water or a coke or something if I wanted to drink, So I'd buy alcohol and I'd drink it all.

For the effect, for the effect of it.

So yeah, and I did music, and I don't want to put a picture across that. My parents were all bad and neglect you know, you know that shit teachers, and they did their best. You know, I was five or six. I think by the time I came along, they were tired and worn out. They're always working, you know, six kids, like I got like one at home and an older one.

I think, Yeah, six is a lot.

It's easy unless you've walked that path. I've got to that stage. It's easy to look back at life and go why didn't they do that? But quite often your parents are products of their upbringing and plays on. What about the hard drugs? When when did that? When when did you realize that it was becoming a problem in your life?

I probably should have, you know, when I smoke pot every day, but still you know, and again grown up in Australia. And I'll jump forward just a little bit before I go back. You know, when I did get into hard drugs and i'd get clean and stop using them, my parents would you know? If I was smoking pot and drinking that was acceptable in Australia.

You know what most definitely I've got friends of known the whole life of the Yeah, poth hits. Yeah, they like a smoke, That's that's what they do and they and they get functioned in life, per fact.

So that wasn't my take. So you know, my parents, you know, if I wasn't using heroin and I was just doing that, you know, I probably they probably thought the better of two evils, you know. So I think I got in the music industry that you know, and I got introduced to speed. You know, in the lay eighties we had ecstasy and acid coming along. But I

Pot. I suddenly had access to this.

So you know, lots of people would ask me, and I'd begun with these people and you know, buying drugs not to make money, just because I knew people. And I just remembered this guy who became my friend, you know.

Just said ah fuck. You know, he said, I'll just give you some and just sell.

It and then you It's a path that you see so many people walk down. Yeah, I was just taking drugs, taking and then I wake up. I'm actually a drug dealer. Yep, And I didn't realize it, got the.

Keys to the candy shop.

And thankfully, you know, that guy doesn't do that anymore, and he's amazing mental health nurse changed his life in Melbourne, you know, and he didn't go the same path as me, but he certainly got out of it.

And it's funny. There's a number of us and we all work in helping fields.

You know, when did your life get to the point where you realize it was tipping that Okay, this was innocent. I shouldn't have done that. But I've done this, but I'm still a good person. When did you realize, okay, I'm living the life of a criminal.

Well, that same guy when he came after me, with a gun. Okay, when I eyed him seventy grand Yeah, okay, well I'm sticking a gun down my throat.

Tell us about that. What happened there?

Well, because I had access to the drugs, but I was using too many, so I was what a bit was profitable.

It had become a Pyramids game.

Yeah, you know what I mean.

So it was going to crash at some stage.

But so you know, I could get drugs off this guy, a couple of pounds of pyton sell and get money and buy drugs and you know, rob Peter to pay Paul.

Sooner or later, you were going to be short.

The pyramid. Yeah, came crashing down, and.

You know he came after me in that instance, and you know, wanted his money back, and it was it was a really difficult time.

Because there's two areas of my drug use and drug dealing.

There was that period and I say it's different because I was selling drugs to people who didn't do crime to buy them.

Okay, you know, okay, so you're mixing in a circle of just that's social.

I would do it.

I used to do the court run in Melbourne to all the barristers, you know, so it's quite prevalent, so most of the people. And I was selling drugs to people in TV, the music industry. So though my actor was criminal, the people I was dealing.

With weren't, so you weren't call in that criminal.

So it was a much safer way to do things. But my user was getting getting out of control and I was using I had news heroin at this stage. I was like nineteen twenty and I you know, but I was out. I was using drugs all the time, cocaine, ecstasy, marijuana, drinking. You know, it was totally out of control. The money was all and I remember this. I had a friend who was actually a heroin addict who I used to sell speed to and it was funny because you'd always say,

Though they owned a house and were manageable, that it cost them. And you think, I'm not going to be like them.

And I was with my girlfriend at the time and we've been on the two day coke bender, and I was like, yeah, I thought I was having a heart attack, you know, And I still remember she said to me, I forget some heroin, it'll take the edge.

I think we can have some more cake. And I thought it's a.

Rational yeah, And I wrung my mate, the one who said he didn't never sell it to me.

I'm laughing, I shouldn't know. It's interesting. I think you've got to look back at the logic at the time and what.

I thought that was really, you know. And I rang and he said because I bought her and got heroin off him before, but for other people. And he said, oh, you know, who's it for, you know, like he's got my moral dealer. It's you've got to laugh about it because it's just insane.

And I said, no, no, it's for me.

And he's like, oh you know what you did it, you know? And I said, no, no, it's all right. I'm on a coke ben, I just need to take the edge off to take more coke. And he's like, and I heard it. I remember yelling to his wife and oh yeah, yeah, all right.

So they sold me. Then.

I remember I was living in East Melbourne near the mcg in this giant townhouse and it was funny because my sister lived in America and for a long time, and my parents had picked her up. I don't know if your parents are naive or they just don't want to believe.

Yeah, sometimes a combination.

And I remember hearing back, you know that she they driven past my house, you know, and it was this is like ninety ninety one or something. It's like fourteen hundred dollars a week, you know, and.

The CD he's doing well for himself, young Claude.

Don't have a job, you know. And my sister was like rock what you know. She sort of thought or there's something going on here. But so, you know, I came back that night and I remember sitting in his house and I snorted some heroin, you know that time I talked about having the drink and that feeling it was that this was the real next one level. And I remember standing at the back door. She was sitting

It was like.

Every orgasm you'd ever had, but your grant, all the people that ever loved you were like it was just and I just remember thinking, I'm going to do everything in my power to feel.

Like this for the rest of my life.

That's the day you offer, isn't.

And that was it?

Yeah, you know, and drugs took over, you know, and you know, within you know, six six months of you know, snorting that hair and I was shooting up and I shot up my whole recording in studio and every everything.

Lost it, everything everything, just for that fix.

Just for that fair I just never had.

How old were you then?

Twenty twenty one? You know, the Chinese call it chasing the dragon. You never get it that first time. That's you spend the rest of your.

Life seeking that seeking that you know, and.

It's you know, there's some poems, but you know, everything it offered in that moment, it took away one.

Hundred So what did your life become?

Then?

You know, all anyone who was in my life really disappeared really quickly. I was a liability, you know, all those guys who were in the access to drugs just you know what I mean. You would know with the police, you don't want junkies around. Annoying junkie yeah, bad for business, you know, like you know, were the people we didn't deal with.

And I became, you know, in my group.

At least ten of us used heroin in you know, two of us became addicted and my mate who you know is now the psych nurse and threatened me with the gun and that, and we lived in that big house in East Melbourne, you know, and within a couple of years, you know, we slept in a tree on Gray Street in the parking, Melbourne in winter.

What was going through your mind that that stage, Like, were you looking at hating yourself? What? I'm just curious what the psychology of what goes through your mind when you've hit bottom like that.

I think I had a huge amount of denial when I look back at it. You have to, you know what I mean, because it's shit like I'm living in sleeping in a tree that night, and my memory of

We're huge.

So I just I think it just became so all encompassing that I just I didn't think about it and I just tried to guess smashed as I I could.

Okay, what are the crimes you started committee for?

I thought it was a legitimate crime. I was a good forger, so I could do signature. So I would steal handbags, get check books, checkbook or the credit card because in those days you didn't have pins, you know, you used to put them in and sign it. And I had it downpacked so much that even if it was a female's, they'd put the card in swiper and I just turn it upside that sign and all they wanted to see was the signature side and didn't say anything.

Get okay, so you fraudently get the cartains taken.

Across and this day, you know, she picks it up and she says, oh it's a famous said.

Oh it's my wife.

Oh yeah, not worry about Yeah, it.

Was different back then, you know.

That's how I got caught because we were staying in a hotel and I was quite careful, and I remember the detectives and I don't know how it come, but I was back at my parents as separated. I was back at my dad's place, maybe on methadone, I think at this stage. And I remember the detectives came to arrest me because that was that just luck because that was my last address and I was actually back there.

And they might have been good police work.

You don't know that, yeah, but in this insin shadow, the rock up, my dad comes to the door, the detectives are there. I'd been sloppy, I'd put my fingerprint on the bit, you know that the carbon bit.

They just got me on that. And I remember thinking, I really is sure, you know, because I thought I was always so so careful.

When did you do your first stint inside?

So there I spent a lot of time, you know, in the three days four days, because you've got to remember, so this is the nineties in Victoria. It's not like it was now. If you got caught and you weren't a dickhead like that kicking in the ass and then you want the paper, you know what I mean? They throw your drugs down the drain because I knew that they cause more pain than any and so I was very lucky in.

A couple of times. You've been given a little bit of latitude.

Oh I remember one time in Melbourne. It's three times. We used to call them bluies. Blueis feel Kans. I think they call them here, but they were blue easy now. And I remember the third time and like the sergeant just gone like mate, fucking go on the train and get away, like you're a nuisance, you know. So I did that, and so I went in and did a couple of small stints in there.

But when was the first time you got a heavy sentence and you thought, shit, this is really.

So the first one was when I came to So when I was twenty nine, my mum was diagnosed with cancer, and you know, she was dying and she was in a lot of pain and you know, she needed to have morphine.

I was like twenty nine and i'd come back home.

I'd actually been one of the first twenty people in Australia on the bupern orphine trial.

So there was this amazing thing. You took this thing. You didn't hang out. And so I was on this trial.

So my parents, as my family, would let me come home or I would come home if I wasn't using and causing chaos. So I came home, but Mum was sick and she didn't want what She wouldn't have morphine in the house because I was there and I was doing all right, and I you know, I just got to this point and I just went, fuck, I cause them enough pain, Like you know, twenty I just need to go. Like, you know, my mum, you know, she

Late twenties ings Cross drugs. So what did you get done? Seven years in prison? What did you get locked up? So?

I was dealing, yeah, straight away.

So what was the first big sentence you got?

So the big the biggest one I got was the last one I did. So I got six years eight months for ongoing supply heroin and well I was on robbery, but I got it downgraded to robbery.

I went to trial on that.

Okay, who'd you rob again?

It's a sad story. It was funny I was thinking about. I was thinking, fuck, you don't want to tell that. It's embarrassing.

But this is to understand it.

Yeah, I was on bail, believe it or not, for ongoing supply of heroin. I don't know if people understand that. You've got to sell it three times. And I knew that I'd sold it to the coppers. But if I didn't sell it to him, I knew they were This is the insanity. I knew the moment I stopped selling. I'm going to kick my daughter down. I couldn't use, so I fucking kept putting you my off and so I sold it.

Over it, kept selling it so you could keep using.

Knowing that they were coming.

They had to great playing cord. Yeah, and that's the insanity. That's the best plan I had, you know. So I ended up I was out on bail. I was with my girlfriend.

I had it.

They used to call me because my name, so my dealing name was Corey because you couldn't have you know.

So what a decent dealer would be called Claude.

Yeah, exactly.

So I was leaving up there with her and I don't even know. I think she'd done a job and someone to give her a ton of ice. So I ended up on ice for three days and I just said, I'm going to get some milk or some smokes.

So I go up the street and for some.

Reason I thought, fuck, I feel really sick, and you know, and then I just had this moment.

I was in Crown Street.

And fuck, I'm a heroin addict. I haven't used. I couldn't even remember. I fucking need heroin. I need to shot a heroin. And I saw this lady closing up her shop. I don't k't even remember what it was, and I just thought, I just I'm going to rub her, which I did, you know, and I stole her.

I didn't know what that.

I had no idea, but it was I think that the handbag was worth more than any of the money. It was like Louis Vatan or something something. So I stole that. And my dealer at the time was at the other end of Crown Street, so I thought, fuck, I haven't got far to run. I can't make out the shop because she was screaming.

Of course, and got hit by a car. That's only hard.

So I get hit by a car, and of course, you know, I'm on adrenaline, so I just get up and go and I'm bowlding down cramps. I've still got the bag, and then I hear this, and I thought, oh no, I know that that's the Cobs And you know, believe it or not, the car that hits me, the two behind me are two undercovers, just you know.

So they chase.

So I cut down through the back laneways because I think I know how to get to this guy's house through the back laneway. They pull up and set chase to me, and I look back and one of them is like this fat sort of copper. I thought, fuck, I've got hear me and I got a hope, and the other ones like this twenty year old girl out of the fucking academy. You're down, she's you know, I probably would have got away because she obviously didn't know

I thought, fuck or robber.

I rob her too, you know, and you know she I don't know whether I did, but she believed I was going for her gun.

Okay, you know, things are starting to get serious.

It was pure, you know, and all I wanted to do was get to this guy's house to have a shot of heroin, to fucking fix it all, you know, to work it all out. And I'm sitting, you know, we have a scaffle and all that, and you know, she pulls back and pulls her gun on me, you know, and I'm like fuck, you know, and still even then, I thought she's not going to fucking shot She really not really just fucking run off, still got the bag

They came pouring in, so.

You got locked up and you get sense to six years eight months.

So first off I was unfortunately there was it was full.

So I spent two weeks in SPC.

Which is it's like twelve weeks anywhere else.

It's horror.

You know, it's underneath the Surreel's police and it there's no window, there's one shower if you're lucky to get it. You know, they heat the pies so hot that it burned your mouth.

You know, it's a horror show.

Yeah, you're not the first guest on my Catch Killers that has complained about that.

So then I went from M double RC to Paramatta. But I got stabbed at Paramatta.

What in there? If correct me? If I'm wrong, You've been shot once yep, and stabbed twice, SA twice, Yeah, tell us about those events.

Well they're stabbing happened at Paris. I was on ramand I was in four wing at Paramatta and in those days so it was C and B CLASSO ramand prisoners one two and three wing was I think it was weekend prisoners and the laundry. So I ended up being the become the laundry sweeper with.

My cell mate.

So you know, we had all the blankets and all that, and they used to come with this white string around them, So our job was to give about the blankets and all that and keep all the strings so people couldn't use it as weapons.

So we had all this string in our.

Room, and my cell mate knew the guy who was the laundry sweeper, so we would pack it all up and he would take it over to one, two and three and his mate lived down the road who had drugs. So in those days, at three point thirty, when they locked you in the guard tower above four wing, he

We got half and the other.

Half went to the guy whose drugs they were, so we did that. But to do that it's not as easy as it sounds. And then the dickhead bloody put a phone on it. So when sal mate goes to pull it back in over the wire, it gets cart and falls into what we call the steriles, are in between the wall and the building. And fuck but my mate at the time was the sweeper for the steroll zone,

Halfway down and wah wah.

They'd seen it. So there was our cell and below us was the Lebanese The guards went straight to the Lebanese blakes and you know.

Blamm and all this sort of thing.

But I'm in my cell because I because I was a sweeper with the laundry, I could stay in my cell when you got let out into the yard, I was.

I was doing something.

And yeah, the next thing you know, ate Lebanese blake's walking to my cell, and you know, this fucking blake's gone. You know, you've got to go and tell me what you And I'm like, okay, fuck yourself, let it. Not telling them fucking anything, you know, and then I just felt this in my guts and you know, and they started attacking me.

How many times? What were the ship they.

Got with a sharpened toothbrush. No, I only let them get at me once. Yeah, luckily because it sort of got stuck in there, which in hindsight was a good thing.

And I just, you know, I hit him Australia.

I thought, I need to just fight fucking for your life here. And I didn't know at the time, but one of the guards had seen them, so they were on their way up. So you know, they the guys had a lookout and they yelled and they all ran and you know, they came out in these blood everywhere, and I just pushed my way past the guard and went straight back out into the yard and they're calling for me, you know, Robinson, you need to come to the office. And I'm like, I'm not going to the office. Well,

When did you get shot?

That was when I was younger.

We were going to a house to so the guy was dealing drugs. There was three of us. We knew he had a twenty two and I, you know, we just went, fuck, he can't shoot us all and we know he's got money.

And you know, claud do you look back at some of your logic and think maybe drugs are another good thing?

Yeah?

It's hands why I don't drink or any drugs. I haven't for nearly seventeen years. Yeah, like when I sometimes it's.

Hard to actually like even make sense of the You think.

How logic?

How the fuck do you get to that?

But it seemed so you got's gotten to do a drug group off, he's got the gun, but he can't shoot all of us.

You go in there and get shot and.

We got Yeah I got shot, but we got drugs on the money.

Did you get shot in the lad?

So it was lucky I turned. It could have been much worse. So you know, things like, yeah, it's just insane.

So so your time in prison, like just you did that was your longest stint six years?

Yeah, I did, so.

I did four and a half, been over four and a half years. I got out from Goldburn actually came to Rainbow Lodge where I'm now the manager, believe it or not. And so when I was in prison, my mum died at the start of that prison sends.

I never got to say goodbye or go to the funeralround.

How did that make you feel?

You know, it's on.

Like I still you know, since I've got clean, I've been to their grave site, you know, with my baby daughter at the time. And I just think the circumstances of because both my parents died when you were in prison, I was in prison in that stint that.

I don't know.

It's so far locked away, you know, And I don't blame anyone else, that's really you know, it's not it wasn't the courts or the police or the prison guards.

You know.

I've you know, in the process of changing my life, I've taken responsibility that I was in jail because I used dougs and I did cry. Now I don't agree with the system, but that's the system that I lived in, so I accept that, you know. And the consequence of that was I was in prison and they weren't going to let me out to see that, so I never got to speak to her. And then at the end of that sentence, I was in Golben and I was in the the maximum security section.

You were released from Golben.

I was released from Golben in two thousand and six.

How long had you serve there?

So I've been in Golben nearly three years. So once I got sent to Golden, I didn't go anywhere else. Yeah, it was horrible. I still remember everywhere I went. I was handcuffed and two guards everywhere.

Well, you got your papers marked when you've sold the prison office, Yeah, definitely, for the rest of your time in prison.

Definitely.

So I arrived at Goldben and Big Bernie he's dead now, died on the muster and the boys cheered.

But he was a tough.

He was an asshole, but you know, he was the old style, you know, when Goldben was tough.

And he was sure services.

Yeah, and they brought me in.

And he said to the two guards, take the handcuffs off and piss off.

And I was like, what's on, what's going on here?

This guy was big, Apparently the story goes, his chair was worth two and a half grand and he's looking at my file and.

A spit it officer assault.

You know, it's it's not pleasant, and you know, he says, Robert, if I could get if I wasn't so fat, I could get off this chair, I'll punch.

You through the fucking wall that was your welcome.

And he said, you're a Goldman, now I own you. This is not like any other jail. And then they went. And so when I went to Gold when it was segregated on Race, so coury yard was like two yard was Lebanese, Ossie Islander, Ossi Asian. Then there was the cookhouse protection and then the filthies, you know, fucking the Murphy's and fucking right down the end there.

I went in the.

Aussi Asian, but I didn't even get there. They put me in the Cory wing right up the end. And I was on one hundred and fifty mills a methadone at the time, so they put me in the end of the sound. Didn't give me a methadone for three days. I was fucking so yeah, I was horrifying, you know. And my mate I just by luck, I knew the sweeper and he would put because the bars didn't have any windows, he would put the cardboard box in and I'd put it up on the window and they'd come

I was freezing. I was so sick.

And then they took me out and put me into the Assi Visian yard and I remember like it's you know, it's half a ten. It's called the sixty five blokes. And you know, in those days, it would take ninety minutes to empty the wing because they only brought two cells out at a time.

And I was like, fucking is going on here?

You know?

And I had nothing like I was, you know, and they knew you don't turn up here for nothing. So they asked me and I told them what was going on. You know, by the time I went in might sell that night at radio books, smokes like of all that, they looked after you. Yeah, you know, they made sure you know, I was all right.

I had some stuff. Yeah, all right, well look we might card just take a break at this time. We've left you in the bad spot. We've left you in prison. We've seen the chaos that is your life. The chaos is your life. When I think when you're saying that, I'm seeing here looking at you, are you for real like some of the decisions you made? But that's the path of go down with that lifestyle and drugs and

Seven seventeen years.

And by the end of this year, you've been out of prison for seventeen years, and you're doing some good work, and we really want to focus on that, focus on that and get your take on that. How the system can be you've seen it, how the system could possibly be improved. All right, it's got good stuff.