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
and honest, just like the people I talk to. Some of the content and language might be confronting. That's because no one who comes into contact with crime is left unchanged. Join me now as I take you into this world. Welcome back to part two of my chat with award winning journalist Neil Mercer. Neil's been a crime reporter for a long time, and there's also the author of the book called The Kingping and the Crooked Cop, the story
of Nettie Smith and Roger Rogerson, partners in crime. After part one, if we all feel a little bit dirty, we've delved into a murky world. There's a lot that happened in that time, isn't there now.
There's a huge amount that went on around Roger and ned and the number of shootings, the number of robberies, the number of court cases. You know, it's between the two of them. There are people who were murdered, killed, or disappeared. It's an extraordinary part of not just policing history. I don't think it's. Part of the reason I really wanted to try and pin a lot of this stuff down is there's so much rumor and speculation and urban myth and I think this is part of Sydney's history.
Well, it is Sydney's history. And there's a lurb for the book and I'll just read it out because it
talks very much to what you just said. There are multiple crimes were committed against the backdrop of a change in Australia from the late seventies to the mid eighties, as Australia's social fabric stretched to adapt to a more global world and money and drugs poured into the country, police, judges, and even the media were up for sale, and Rogerson and Smith were the princes of this violent new world. It sums it up pretty well, doesn't it.
Absolutely and Roger was and I've described him as such as a prince of the city and he was untouchable. And Ned, I mean, wow, you know, from that early conviction he moves into heroin dealing in the late seventies. He's in fact linked up with a very famous syndicate that got picked up in Bangkok with eight kilos of heroin. Ned was going to distribute some of that in Sydney. He claimed at one stage to be Australia's biggest heroin dealer.
I'm not sure that might have just been Ned sort of embellishing the facts which he had, you know, he was prone to do. But nevertheless, he was a big figure in Sydney in the late seventies, mid seventies on into the early eighties.
And I guess from a.
Public perspective, these two guys really come to prominence, in my view, for the first time, to public prominence in nineteen eighty one, when by this stage Ned has been Roger's informer for five years or well, they've got a very close relationship for five years, and we have the shooting of Warren Land Franchi.
Yeah, let's take it through that, because that seemed to be the turning point, didn't it where people go and hold that something's something that's a bit smelly.
That's right, and you know.
June twenty seven, nineteen eighty one, it's a Saturday afternoon, just before three pm in Dangar Place, which is just down from Sydney University. It's parallel to Cleveland Street, I think, over the road from the Brittannia Hotel. Land Francie walks in to meet Rogerson, apparently to try and do some deal. Because Warren land Francie is a heroin dealer, he thinks he's there to bribe Rogerson. Rogerson says and has always always maintained that he was there to arrest land Francie.
And once again, the place is surrounded by very heavily armed police, at least eighteen of them, so they are police officers in cars. There's a couple of cops in the pub having a schooner. We're about to have their second.
That's unusual.
Land Francie is shot dead. What we know for absolute certain Royal Land Francie is shot dead by Roger Rogerson just before three o'clock that Saturday afternoon. One shot goes.
Through the heart.
One is in the neck incredibly. Roger almost immediately does a newspaper interview with the Sunday Time pograph good on the reporter from the Sunday Telly. I mean, it's a big scoop, but it's sort of portrayed.
In this way.
You know, Roger was walking the mean streets alone. Was it a bit like high Noon? You know the Hollywood movie, the old Hollywood movie. Oh yeah, it was a bit like that, says Roger. You know, and there's this, I guess image of the sheriff cleaning up the means, cleaning up the mean streets. Yeah, he's on his own. Well, he wasn't quite on his own. He had eighteen other police around him and three others in the lane with him.
That first day is probably the only day he gets away with it, because pretty much straight up in the following.
Days, there's a suggestion that.
Land Francie had ten thousand dollars on him to bribe Rogerson, that he didn't have a gun, so Rogerson didn't shoot him in self defense as he claimed. And it starts to balloon from there, and Warren's girlfriend Sally and huckstep goes on sixty minutes National TV makes some of these allegations, and I went round I was working in nineteen eighty one. It was the first crime story I ever really did.
Went to see Keith Lanfranchi, the father, and Keith tells me that his son has been shot in cold blood. It's because he's ripped off one of Roger's heroin dealers a few weeks earlier, and that he's also been told that rather than the shots in the lane way that Saturday afternoon being fired in quick succession, as Roger had told the Sunday Telly, the shots were twelve to thirteen seconds apart, which opens up a whole range of possibility.
Changes dynamics.
It did, It did, and look the end result was I guess that there was an inquest, you know. It was unsatisfactory, to say the least, in that the land Franchie family wanted to air a lot of allegations because the person who drives Warren land Franchie to that fateful meeting that Saturday afternoon is Ned Smith. The land Franchie
family and Sally Ane Hucksteps lawyers. They want to explore Roger's relationship with Ned, you know, and also Ned's relationship to Warren land Francie because Warren was selling some of Ned's heroine. None of that is allowed. And you know, Roger always maintained that Warren land Francie came in, he was always going to be arrested, hence the police all around, and that he pulled a gun and Roger got his gun out first and fired those two fatal.
Shots or to the two shots that guild him.
Yeah, Look, the inquest itself, the family thought it was a farce and they had a point.
Yeah, and there's other stuff and we won't go into all the detail about the firearm that he was supposedly carrying and all sorts of things, what he was wanted for at the time shooting the police officer. It's murky, and there's a smell about it, and it continues to this day, doesn't it.
It does, But the smell is it started in pretty much, as I said, within days, with all the allegations from Warren's dad, from Sally and Huckstep. But you know, the inquest found that Roger had shot him trying to effect an arrest. And as you say, people still talk about it, and look, it's unresolved in the public mind.
And I think, yeah, you said there was aideen police there. I know the culture of policing. I know the pressures of operations. I know how it works and the little clicks if Yeah, if something untoward is done by Roger, he can keep it very close to himself on what he's intent is, because he just seemed to weave so much power.
Yeah, that's exactly right.
I mean, there's no way that you know, you can keep eighteen police quiet for forty years if it's something untoward has happened and they've seen it. I mean, there were civilian witnesses nearby. There are people over in the pub who made statements. There are ambulance officers who arrived within minutes of the shooting because their base was only a kilometer away. It is the family has always said
Warren was murdered. The coroner said, or the jury actually found that Warren was shot by Rogerson while he was trying to affect an arrest. And the failure of the inquest to me was not to call a lot of witnesses who were then alive, who could have at least been cross examined. He didn't want to know. He was, in the parlance of the day, the magistrate at the time was a policeman, not because he'd been in the cops,
but because he supported the police force. He was very much on the side of detectives and he didn't like crooks.
And that's how we would talk quite often about judicial officers. Now he's a police officer as in not the fact, as you said, he wasn't in the police, but they just proy police. That seemed to be all the shines started to come off Roger after.
That, Yeah, I think so.
I mean, he had that twenty four hours of being you know, Gary Cooper in high noon, but that's the first time he really comes to public prominence, and it's the first time Ned Smith really comes to public prominence. By that stage, they've known each other since nineteen seventy six, so they've been working on and off together in whatever form that may take. But yeah, it's from that point
that they both become known. Because Ned is actually named in State Parliament as the person who drove him there. Roger's name is now bandied around. There's calls for a judicial inquiry. Roger becomes too hot for the cob They move him down to Darlinghurst and he's there for a couple of years and eventually then other matters happen. There's
never a judicial inquiry into the land Franchi shooting. There was a Supreme Court hearing or a court hearing at least Keith land Franchi applied for a second inquest that was knocked back. The judge was scathing of the case and said there was nothing further to be done. The inquest had been held. It was fair and that was that.
Okay, that's the system working, isn't it all the system? Whether it's working, that is how the system operates. So should say.
That's right, and you know it worked in Roger's favor in that case.
Okay, Now we're going to get head where the shooting of Mick Jury. Mick Jury was an undercover police officer had been working undercover on some drug trades.
Yeah, mckdrury. This is by now Rogers at darling Hurst. He goes there in eighty two. He Mick Drewy, as you say, was involved in a drug deal down in Melbourne. But as an undercover officer, he's trying to arrest a guy called Alan Williams who's a big heroin dealer associated with painters and Dockers and all that sort of stuff. Williams is arrested. Drury, Michael Drew, the undercover cop, is involved in the arrest of Alan Williams. The court procedures,
the trial procedures start to flow. Williams is desperate to avoid a conviction. The only person who can identify him from that drug deal that night is Mick Drury. He tries to he wants to bribe Drury. How does he do that? He's Melbourne based. Well, he's got a good mate in Sydney by the name of Christopher Dale fl because they've been through the prison system in Melbourne together.
He phones Flannery says, look, Mick Drury, just offer him a lot of money, or do you know anybody in there who can sort of in the cops, who can help me get Mick Drury off my back? And Flannery says, yes, he does.
He says he.
Knows a good cop by the name of Roger Rogerson. So this is all in train eighty two, eighty three, eighty four. Drury refuses point blank to accept a bribe. No, No, I've identified Alan Williams as the man with the heroine and I'm not going to change my evidence. They up the offer to thirty five grand or whatever it was. Drury remains steadfast. Then Alan Williams, the heroin dealer, starts to think, geez, I'm in real trouble here, and he
comes up to Sydney. He meets with Rogerson and Chris Flannery, and eventually there's a number of meetings. There's a number of He comes up to Sydney. A bit long story short, they have dinner one night, he says Williams, Roger Rogerson and Chris Flannery, and Flannery and Rogerson knew each other, and they come to an arrangement to make sure Mick
Drury doesn't make court. Alan Williams said he didn't know how that was actually going to play out, but he knew what that meant, and he was prepared to pay one hundred thousand dollars for Drury not to make court, to be murdered. And that's what almost happened. In nineteen eighty four. Mick Drury's at home with his little kids and his wife in his own house, in his kitchen when he is shot through kitchen window and shockingly wounded. He barely survives. I think is unconscious, near death for
like ten days. He eventually comes around and makes what was then called Drew his dying deposition, and in that he says, I think this is related to the job down in Melbourne with Allen Williams. And I've got to say that Roger Rogerson offered me a bribe to drop off the case or to change my identification of Williams. I refused it, and I think that's why I've been shot. I'm shortcutting a lot of stuff here, Gary.
But now just on that point, with the dying deposition, it's part of getting that that I believe I might shortly die. This is the confession from a potential dead man.
He's hovering close to death.
So when you're telling something, you're telling something we've purpose.
Oh absolutely, I don't think. I don't think anybody apart from Roger ever thought he made it up. Some people were in two minds early on. I think later on people have no doubt that mcdruy was telling the truth. And he was shot because of that case.
And the.
Roger is charged in nineteen eighty four. I think it is first with the attempted bribery, I mean, was this was a bit of a I'm afraid to say a bit of a dog's breakfast. The investigation into the shooting of Michael Drury. I mean, it's a shocking thing that's happened.
It's serving police officers. Police officer attempted to be murdered because of he's carrying out his.
Duties, carrying out his duties in his own home. The investigation because it's Rogerson. I mean, people don't want to believe that Roger could possibly be in in the attempted murder of one of his own. The Commissioner of the day is expressing dismay. So you've got two investigations running. One was the investigation into the attempted bribery and one was the investigation into the attempted murder of Drury. But are they running parallel but not knowing what the other
one was doing. Look, Eventually Roger is charged with the attempted bribery of Drury.
He gets off that.
A few years later, Roger's charged with the attempted murder of Michael Drury. Because in those intervening years, Alan Williams, the heroin dealer who's at the beginning of it all, rolls over and says yeah, I was part of a plot to murder Mick Drury, and I met with Roger Rogerson and Chris Flannery, and I offered one hundred thousand dollars to have it done. I didn't know how exactly or when exactly it was going to happen. But he
pleads guilty to the attempted murder. He gets jailed. He gives evidence against Roger, but you know, he's an ex painter and Docker he's a bloke dealing in heroin, and Roger's got this fantastic character.
And because.
The attempted bribery case had been run earlier and failed, Roger was found not guilty. Some of that evidence in that case. Because of the rules of the court, some of that evidence in the first case could not be used in the attempted murder case. So the prosecution was in a way hamstrung. And also Williams he's a good crook and he's up against Roger Rogerson.
How the cards might fall for Roger to Christopher Flannery disappears.
Yes, that's right. He disappears May nineteen eighty five, never to be seen. So there's no way in the world Chris Flannery can give evidence against anybody.
He's long gone.
Where he's gone, nobody knows. There is a long list of suspects and Roger was one. But yeah, the suspects, people who might have wanted to kill Chris Flannery. Was a bit like a Melbourne cup Field, I think. But at the end of the day, this long and involved saga, the attempted the shooting of Michael Drury, which is really one of my colleagues described it as a stain that will stay with the New South Wales Police for a
long long time. And I think he's right. It's unresolved because Roger gets off at all because.
He's this, you know, and there was suggestions, inferences or whatever. Yeah, I think even that Mick got people went hard at him. Why are you saying this? And yeah, like pull your heading.
Oh they tried various people and I think it was Roger and with a bit help from NED, did their very very best to blacken the character of Mick Drury. And it was all it was all.
Crap, you know.
They made stuff up about oh he's having affairs, he's doing all this, Oh he's corrupt, you know, it was all garbage. It was pretty straightforward.
But yeah, he.
Roger doesn't survive this in a way, even though he's found not guilty, because as all this is unfolding in nineteen eighty four, as he's charged with the first one, the attempted bribery of Drury, he is suspended without pay. So effectively his last day in the New South Wales Cops is November roundabout there in nineteen eighty four. He suspended without pay. He goes on to beat the bribery charge and the attempted murder charge and you.
Know, well reference a conversation we had off Mike the time how divisive it was within the police because police didn't want to believe that one of their own would have organized to murdered Drury and a good friend of mine, I won't mention his name, but the well respected detective was supporting Roger or thinking that yeah, he's from what
I've seen of him, he's fine. But then they find out that Roger when he's suspended, that there was an account that he had with one hundred and ten thousand dollars, and the police that were loyal to Roger or just loyal to the fact that he was a police officer, were whipping around a fighting fund for Roger, and then they find out that he's got this account exactly.
I remember that, and I like yourself.
I knew a detective at that time who I spoke to him, and he said, I gave fifty or one hundred bucks to Roger's fighting fun because I thought he was innocent or you know, I wasn't convinced that he'd done the wrong thing. And then they find out that Roger as two bank accounts with a total of about one hundred and ten thousand dollars in them. To say they're a bit pissed off the police that have been
putting in this money is an understatement. He lost a lot of support, partly over Michael Drury and partly over that because there's all this cash in they're in bank accounts in false names. Roger says, oh, part of that one hundred and ten grand belongs to a business friend of mine who's a bit of a gambler, which is sort of handy because then you can't trace Spacehorse. And also part of it comes from the proceeds of the sale of a Bentley that I've been restoring. Wow, you
know nothing about Roger or ned is straightforward. I wish it was it. I must say sometimes I felt writing this book, I felt quite overwhelmed by the twists and turns, and sometimes you could sort of find yourself in a hall of mirrors, going geez, hang on. I thought I understood what this was going on, and now I find out this what the bloody hell is going on?
Here?
Where does the where there's the truth?
Lie? Yeah?
At what stage did that blow up? When I say blow up? I remember the interview, the Ray Martin interview on I think it was a Current Affair, was it or sixty minutes Current Affair? When Roger's come on that, I feel like I need to defend myself.
Yeah. So, because that was fascinating, Roger is suspended without paying eighty four he is going to be Finally in nine eighty six they decide to boot him out of the force. Those proceedings are about to happen. Roger goes on the offensive the front foot. He says, I want to go on Ray Martin. Oh sorry, I want to go on a Current Affair, which at the time was being hosted by Ray Martin.
And he goes on TV.
It's pre recorded for legal reasons, but you know, I don't think he thought through what he was going to say, because a he names Lenny McPherson as a police informer and Need Smith as a police informer, which well, is a good way of getting somebody killed for a start, but is not what a police officer should be doing on national television. But you know, he also says stuff that is just unbelievable. Ray Martin says, have you ever seen any corruption in the New South Wales Police Force?
No?
No, ever had any dealings with a corrupt police officer. No, no, I've never met a corrupt police officer in my life. And if he was looking for public support or to win over public sympathy, I think it completely backfired because people were going, oh, come on, you know, there's got to be one, You've got a bit one or two.
You know.
Do you think what took him there was desperation or his own ego or hubris or what was it that was.
A good play A good question.
I'm not really sure, but I guess he probably thought he had nothing to lose. He was going to be booted out of the cops anyway without superannuation. Well, I don't think I'm not sure how much super existed in those days, but without any benefits that he might have accrued. I think he thought he had nothing to lose. I think he felt that he could still pull off a performance that would win him some sympathy. As you say, it's ego. A couple of people said to him, are
you sure you want to do this? He said, yep, yep, no problem. Well it was a problem because obviously he names Lenny and Ned Smith as informers. That's then used against him as further ammunition to kick him out.
Breaching police pravate coal.
Breaching police protocol, bringing the New South Wales Police into disrepute, and that's what they boot him out on those disciplinary matters. He's not kicked out because of any criminal conviction. It's an extraordinary thing that he did. But he used the media often. I mean I did that interview with him in nineteen eighty two. You know he's going on the front foot.
He does lots.
He does the interview after shooting land Franchi, I mean, which is incredible, and he goes on Ray Martin on National TV when he's really under a lot of fire.
It's almost like you because the next part I want to talk about. It's almost like you can't make this stuff up, Like if you pin this, if this was in the fiction section, I'll be going now you've gone too far, Gone too far. This doesn't happen. But didn't neddie get run over or an attempt on his life? After Roger's appearance, Roger appears on a current affair. Don't hold me to the exact day, but he appears one night and I'm pretty certain he names Ned as an informer.
I think.
The next day or the day after, Ned is walking down a footpath in Alexandria near the Iron Duke Hotel, which he used to have a beer you're at. Somebody tries to murder him by running him over with a car on the footpath. Car comes up on the footpath, bang into Ned. Ned goes down, car tries to reverse over him, misses luckily for Ned. He struggles into the Iron Duke and just sort of you know, then goes to hospital, discharges himself. He's got broken arms, legs, he's
not in a good shape. But he then decides he wants to go on a current affair, which he does a night or so later, again with Ray Martin. Ray
Ray was over the moon. This is, as you say, you almost couldn't make this stuff up because Ned, because he's badly injured, I think, was chop it in on the Channel nine chopper which lands, you know, and the old Channel nine headquarters and that's all filmed and goes to where and Ned denies that he's, you know, a police inform He just says, oh, I make my money out of a bit of s p, a bit of stealing, a bit of this, and that you know, generally downplays
his criminal career. But yeah, they on national television. You know, as you say, you couldn't make it.
Up, you can't. And then referencing another media interview back from the sixty Minutes, Sally Anne Huckstep She's murdered.
She's murdered in nineteen eighty six, very early nineteen eighty six. She's found in Centennial Park in Sydney in a pond. She's found early one morning, well certainly one morning, by I think a jogger or somebody walking their dog. They see a body floating. Police are called. She's known very well to a lot of police because she's been around for a long time. They identify her as Sally Anne Huckstep. She first the very first day or two, the pathologist
who examines, he says, I might not be murder. She might have had a heroin shot and drowned in the lake. That's pretty quickly dispensed with when a second opinion is called for and she strangled. You know, there's no two ways about it. She's but she's been murdered.
That's not just reminding people that this is sally Anne Huckstep who was warrant Lane Francie's girlfriend who went on sixty Minutes to say that he was murdered.
That's right.
And Sally Anne went on sixty minutes in nineteen eighty one, a week or eight days after her boyfriend was shot dead. In a way, she blows the whistle on Ron Roger in a big way. I mean it's National TV, it's prime time. He obviously hates her. Ned Smith hates her as well. So that's eighty one, she's murdered in eighty six. You know she's a complex person as well. You know she's a whistleblower. She was incredibly courageous to do that interview,
I think. But in late eighty five and early eighty six, she's running around with two federal police, and she's doing it very publicly in King's Cross out at the Long Bay. She's seen with these two federal cops, and word is getting around that she's informing Whether that's I mean, I think the coroner suggested that that was a reason that she was murdered, that people saw her doing this were uncertain of what she was doing. But you know, Roger's
been accused of her murder. Ned Smith is eventually actually charged with her murder, but that comes quite a number of years later, in.
Fact, quite over a decade later.
Yeah, okay, So just trying to I'm trying to keep up with them more. We've got Roger, he he's out of the police. Now Ned's they've had their doing them throwing with Ray Martin. Yep, Need's been run over. Then Ned gets himself into the trouble. There was a murder. It was a tow truck driver, a road rage incident.
That's right.
So eighty four is Roger's last day in the cops. Eighty six he's officially kicked out. He's still hanging around with Ned. Eighty seven comes around, and sometime towards the end of eighty seven, I think it is.
Don't hold into the.
Dates here, because there are a lot of dates. There are a lot of incidents. But he's having a drink with Roger at I think the Covent Garden Hotel in Chinatown. Ned's there with the mate of his. It's a big session. There's a lot of beer and other drinks had, you know, mids middy's. At some stage in the evening, around seven or eight, Ned and his mate decided it's a great idea to drive to Kujie to bat on drinking. They leave Roger behind.
Something tells me they're not the type to worry about drink driving.
No, I think it was a miracle given the amount of alcohol consumed. It was a miracle actually managed to get Goodjie far. They got that far. A judge later actually commented on that they're in Cuojie Bay Road, Sydney's eastern suburbs, and they all of a sudden stop near a fish and chip shop. Nobody knows why, whether they're hungry. A tow truck with two blokes and it pulls up behind Ned and is made of blocking the traffic. The
tow truck driver flashes his lights. Bad mistake. Ned's mate gets out of the car, comes around, tries to belt the tow truck driver. The passenger of the tow truck gets out, he starts to have a blue All of a sudden, you've got Ned Smith's mate and the two blokes in the tow truck having a barney outside a fish and chip shop, but also being seen by diners in a restaurant and people on the footpath. In that fight, the passenger in the tow truck driver blow called Ronnie Flavel,
is stabbed to death. He dies pretty much on the footpath. Ned and his mate bolt. They're arrested very soon after. Initially, Ned gets bail because it's such a confused crime scene, Melle, and it's nighttime and people have been drinking. He gets bail, so he's out and saying I've never stabbed anybody in my life. So you've got all the cases both with both Roger and Ned not running parallel but running over each other a lot of the time. So they're in and out of court. I don't know either of them.
I mean, with Rogerson in particular, I mean, whatever you say about him, he had a certain resilience to be accused of all this stuff time and time and time again, and he's still standing.
Yeah.
So Ned Smith's in trouble for murder and he's a waiting trial.
So and where are we got Roger at this stage? So he's out of the police Any idea what Roger was doing? I know I saw him at one time saying he's installing security bars.
He was installing security It was a bit of a handyman, you know, he could do a bit of welding all that sort of stuff. He was probably better than a handyman. He was installing security grills. He was doing some work I think for the New South Wales Department of Housing, you know, minors sort of stuff. He was also at one stage involved with a company that made safes. He's doing a range of things, but he's generally, he says, pretty down on his luck. He's got nothing from the
police force, you know. And yeah, I mean he's doing the best he can as they say, okay.
We've got him doing that. He then got dragged into ICAC inquiry or the Royal Commission.
There's a few things unfolding as usual with nothing simple with Roger. Because we've mentioned one hundred and ten thousand dollars in the bank accounts. He's charged with that for conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. There's one hundred and ten grand in the bank false names, which I have to point out was not actually an offense. You could do it, but Roger doing it obviously attracted a fair bit of attention. He's charged with conspiring to permit
the course of justice. He's convicted because his excuses as to where the money came from are not believed, and there's a critical witness who gives evidence against him and says what Roger says is a lie. He didn't get that money from me.
So he goes.
He sentenced to jail, He appeals, he wins his appeal in the Court of Criminal Appeal, bounces out of jail. He's served about twelve months and says, I always knew that justice would win through. I'm a firm believer in the system of justice. It's a triumph.
And he's I remember that standing on the steps of her, and I.
Think he's wearing an armed hold up squad tie even though he hasn't been there for a long time. For Roger, that party gets spoiled when the crown says, well we're going to appeal this all the way to the High Court. The High Court overturns his acquittal as it were, and says, Roger, you're going back to jail, back inside. So he's back inside. That's ninety two to ninety five. He serves three years.
In the meantime, let's jump back to Ned. He's up for the murder charge of the tow truck driver Ronnie Flavel. He's out on bail. The following year, I think it is he decides that it might be a good idea to rob Botany Council armed robbery, armed hold up squad, not Roger, different armed hold up squad or different different detectives are waiting for him. He's caught red handed outside Botany Council with guns, you know, balaclav as, the whole box and dice.
He's gone.
He's absolutely gone, and so his freedom ends that day. Judges taking a fairly dim view of somebody already on bail for murder, committing an armed robbery, and he never gets he never gets out.
Not a good look, but he managed to bring himself unstuck. We're talking Ned here. When he was in prison because he had a big mouth and was talking to his cellmate about a number of crimes. And I think it was that John Waycock, I think was heading up a strike force related to that with seven murders. And he was in fact charge with multiple murders, wasn't he on the back of admissions he'd made to a fellow prisoner.
Absolutely. So he's in jail for the murder of Ronnie Flavell. So he's in jail for life. Well, and life doesn't mean in those days life. It means probably about twelve fifteen years. But while he's in jail, he's trying to get out and he goes to various authorities with allegations of police corruption. That comes to pretty much nothing, although there is a public inquiry and there's a lot of publicity.
But for Ned, by the mid nineties, he's still languishing in prison and he's not on protection, but he's in a particular part of the jail which houses prison informers. An informer comes in to his unit. It's called a unit. There are two cells and there's a very small common area that both prisoners can use. Ned gets chatting to this prisoner and he knows that the other bloke's an informer as well, because that's why he's in this particular unit of the prison.
I'm familiar with the area.
Yeah, it's it's not like oh so. Ned proves to be his own worst enemy big time, not being able to help himself. He starts to talk to this prisoner in the book, I've called him Terry, obviously not his real name. Terry has been in a bit of st life all his life, most of his adult life, and he tells me this in an interview. He said, he said, geez, he just kept.
On going on and on and on.
I felt like saying, shut the f up. But then Terry, obviously having been around the system, goes, well, maybe I can turn this to my advantage. He contacts his case officer, New South Wales detective and the cops go, oh, this could be good, could be worthwhile. They plant a listening device in a computer that's being used in the cell, and that then records Ned confessing to the murder of Sally and Huckstep, a small time crook that knew Ned
very well, called Harvey Jones. He confesses to another murder of a drug dealer, Luton Shu, who was found buried south of Sydney. He confesses in all to a significant number of murders. This is all tape recorder, so it's not like a prison informer going, oh, he told me this. He told me that they've got a gone tape. Ned's been round about nineteen ninety six. Ned is charged with
seven of the murders to which he's confessed. They don't charge him with all of the ones, because sometimes there's not enough robborative evidence, but seven's not a bad start. He's convicted of the murder of Harvey Jones, who was sort of He was a tall, lanky bloke that used to hang around with Ned. He was a sort of a wannabe gangster. You know his last scene I think with Ned at the Star Hotel. Ned confesses to this cell mate. He says, oh, this is Harvey Jones. You
know he was becoming a pest. I blew his heart out with a big three five seven revolver and he describes also in this tape according where he's got rid of him near.
The airport.
At that stage. Harvey Jones. His body has never been found, but fortuitously not for Ned, but luckily for the investigating police. About six months after Ned makes that confession to his prisoner mate. The remains of Harvey Jones are discovered pretty much exactly where Ned said he buried him.
That'll do it, and that will do it.
And also the bullet fragments saw whatever they were. The ballistics evidence supports the fact that a three five seven revolver was used. Could have been a thirty eight, but it's consistent also with a three five seven. So what Ned has said in jail and been recorded matches up with what is found.
It's interesting because he was only convicted of the Harvey Jones one. He's found not guilty sally an hugstep, but the fact that for ture of the corroborative evidence was discovered on that that probably sealed the deal on him being convicted of that. It leads you to say he wasn't talking all fantasy that what he was talking about the other one so.
Well that he claimed he was just making it all.
Up, you know, big coincidence with Harvey.
Big coincidence with Harvey. And also there was a witness who helped bury Harvey's body who eventually came forward and said, yeah, I was there and I helped bury the body. So between the secret jail recordings, the location of Harvey's body when Ed said he'd put it out of the Informer, He's gone for all money on that one. Look, he tried to claim he was making all this stuff, this stuff up, that he was big noting. The trouble is that a lot of it. You know, he knew these people.
He'd written about it in some of his books.
He'd written about knowing a lot of these people.
Now, it might take you into a psychology of hard working police. I say, but I was working on a strike force at police headquarters, and that strikeforce investigating those seven murders was working in another incident room beside me. I had two people on my investigation that was a serial killer, and they had about a dozen people in their strikeforce room. And I'd always complained, it can't be that hard. You've read a book like come and help
me work on my investigation. But yeah, just reminded me of a time I'm stuck on my own on one side and they are on the other side investigating that that he'd written about it.
Oh yeah, he'd partly written about Harvey Jones, how he was a pest a plane on the backside.
Of course, all this is produced.
In court against him, and it's his own words, although I've read the transcript of that one. At one stage he said, I didn't write that. I didn't write that in those are not my words. Somebody else wrote those.
Which is there any part of your book you want to take out?
No, not so far.
So look he's yeah, of course, he says, Oh, this is corrupt New South Wales police getting back at him for making allegations. And that defense is run, and you know it's run very strongly by by his barrister, Winston Terracini, who you know it makes a very very good.
Case for it. But you know, Winston's never backward in case he is.
Not backward, and he is he is. You know some of the stuff he said, I've quoted it in the book. It's it's terrific. I mean, ned could not say he did not get a good defense in any of the cases. But look, at the end of the day, he's convicted of Harvey Jones and he is sentenced to life, meaning life, he's never getting out. He beats the charge of murdering Sally an Huckstep, although personally I think he's good for it, and they don't proceed with the others.
The others, but he's in jail for life. He was suffering parkets and disease. Yeah, ladder part of his life. And what year did he pass away in He passed away a couple of years ago, seventy six at the time.
Yeah.
Yeah, Look, he probably lived a lot longer than most people thought because he did have Parkinson's. It obviously got progressively worse. When I met him that time at lunch at Prunier's restaurant, I didn't discern any Parkinson's. He did have it, but it wasn't it wasn't noticeable or I can't remember it. But yeah, he got a lot worse than in the end, he was pretty much unable to look after himself in jail.
Okay, Roger Tales of Roger. He ended with a grand finish with the Jamie gow murder, but in the lead up to that he got put back inside for another was it line to the line to the Police Integrity Commission?
Yeah, he gets caught for perjury. He's called to an inquiry and Roger's doing some building work, you know, minor building work, as we've discussed, and he's got a mate at Liverpool Council who's helping him get some work. The bloke at Liverpool Council is known as mister ten percent because when he gave out the contract, you'd.
Get there anyone clean, well, good.
Old Sydney councils. I mean, you know, there's a long I wouldn't say proud tradition. But anyway, the contract is Roger's getting some work. I think he might have got about fifty grands worth. And he's called to this inquiry and he's asked, oh was this bloke. Did you ever describe this bloke as mister ten percent?
No?
No, no, no no, did you ever pay him ten percent?
No?
No, no, it's all rubbish. Of course they've got Roger's house bugged. They then playing the tape recordings and Roger's there might have been even on Christmas Day, and he's going, oh so, and so he's known as mister ten percent. I've got to put ten percent aside.
He's lied.
He's gone for perjury and I think that was the late nineties, but he doesn't actually go to jail until about two thousand and five. It's a long drawn out process.
And I could imagine Roger going into that he'd be thinking. He'd almost enjoy it, like it'd almost give him a little bit. Yeah, I can play this. This is what an inquiry. I'll just talk my way out of that.
You read the transcript, and it sounds like that at one stage he's been asked about something or other and he says, I can't remember, you know, my memory is not what it used to be. And the barrister who's cross examined him and he says, oh, maybe you can have a bit of a think, and Roger says, yeah, I'll give it a oil and grease change and get it ready for the next time, you know, And it's this sort of humorous throwaway line.
I don't like him, the shame that the crimes he's committed and the shame he's brought on police, but there's something about him. It's just yeah, there's he just keeps kept turning up, didn't he?
He kept turning up. And look, I've got to be in the book, I say in the prologue. I've said I met him a lot over many years. He was good company. I liked him. I mean it was if you were around Roger for a while, it was almost impossible not to like him. It's not to say I wasn't aware of who he was good company. I suppose you could describe it as terrific company.
You know.
I always had a good story or had the latest, not not gossip. But he continued, even when he gets out of the cops, he continues to mix with all these crooks, so he still knows everybody and in the city.
I wondered quite often his name had get dropped when I was on investigations or whatever. And I'm not sure if it was people just trading off his rep or whether he was really involved in things. It's yeah, it was a bit of a mystery.
Oh look, I think people have often used his name, and it's happened to me. A couple of people have come up and said, oh, yeah, Roger did this, Roger did that, And I said, oh, when was that and they said, oh, I was, say the late nineties, and they're saying he's in the police force, and I'm going, maybe he wasn't in the police force then, and they go, oh, oh, maybe it wasn't him. I think Roger's name got bandied around a lot because it was convenient, you know.
Well, either way, it made people think and ah, they connected, they know Roger. I'll get Roger to come and speak to you, or something like that. So his name could be used in that way. But he certainly didn't share any remorse or embarrassment. He was doing his stage show with Chopper Read and yeah, you hear snippets of the stage show. You would have seen it. But there was no remorse for the people that were killed.
Oh, there was no remorse for anybody. He turned it to his advantage, and he was sometimes macabre in some of the things he said. And I remember something about the Philip Western shooting. And for many years Roger actually claimed he was one of the police that had shot Philip Weston, the arm drobber who was killed up at Avoca. And in his stage shows he would say something like, you know, we had Philip Weston surrounded, I had my shotgun. He Western stuck his head out of a bathroom window.
We all let fly with the remington blew his head off. His dear old mum, Alice Blossom Western could only identify him by his ingrown toenails because there was nothing left of his head. And you know, you'd sort of go, oh, you know, and I know a lot of his colleagues were going, what's he doing? For a start, you know, Roger didn't s Philip Western. He was there, but he didn't actually shoot him, even though he told me he did, And at that stage many years ago, Gary I believed him.
I mean, I didn't know why he would confess to that if he hadn't done it. But I think he just thought it added.
To his notoriety trade off it. But those sort of stories.
But not show any remorse. All the times I've seen police involved in shooting incidents, especially if they're pulled the trigger and someone's being killed, they're not celebrating that the impacts deeply on them and that they carry it for the rest of their lives. And yeah, yeah, that's right a normal person.
I don't think he had any remorse about any of the crimes or shootings. Sorry ever, I think the only remorse he ever showed was in relationship to his family, to his daughters, his wife. I think he was genuinely remorseful about that. But about the shooting of land Francie butchy Burn, Philip Western, you know, any case he was deeply involved in, I don't think there was any remorse there.
At all, and he felt he certainly felt for a long time their bitterness that he'd been betrayed by the you know, the new broom in the New South Wales Police Force, because I think I think he said something, you know, like you know, I was just doing what we'd always done and all of a sudden they shifted the guy post.
So I can understand him having that you created me. Now you now you're you're shaming me for doing what you wanted me to do. Yeah, but like I can tell you, Roger across that it was just a lie. He was on another planet.
That was.
It wasn't like they would put tough people together to do tough jobs. And I respect that and respect the jobs that these guys would do. Roger just took it to a completely different level. And I think and I got a sort of i'd not say satisfaction because someone was murdered, Jamie Gower, even if he was tied up
in drugs, he didn't deserve what happened to him. But seeing Roger come unstuck in such a I call it almost comical way where he's walking captured on CCTV, walking with his hip and the waddle and all that like, he just to me, it just showed someone to me, it was embarrassing for a detective to get caught in so many ways. He got caught on that particular murder. Do you want to just tell us briefly about that.
We've had Russell Oxford on the show, and Russell gave us a very good insight into that investigation, but just a brief overview of that.
Well, Russell Oxford certainly knows a lot more about it than I do.
But I mean, you.
Know, the year before he's charged with the shooting of Jamie Goar twenty fourteen, just a few months before, Roger had appeared in a civil matter and he was sort of sitting there going, this is in court, and he's sitting there going, oh, you know, I've I wouldn't be committing crimes at my age, you know, he said, I'm sort of past that if I did, I'd probably be caught.
Lo and behold.
Twenty fourteen, Jamie Gower gets shot and as Russell's explained, storage unit and there's all this CCTV of Roger with his very distinctive gait.
I mean, he had.
A bad hip, he had a bad shoulder. I think he had arthritis and he had gout.
It was like a wattle.
It was a wattle, yeah, and you know you sort of shake your head. I remember when it first hit the headlines, The Daily Telegraph had a great scoop Rogerson wanted for murder and I'm just going what you know? And I rang an old colleague of his and I said, I you've seen Roger lately, like in the previous month or two.
And he said.
Something like yeah, I saw him a couple of weeks ago. I said, as he still got all his marbles And there was a pause and he said sharp as attack. And I went wow, because by then it was emerging that he'd been caught on which was gathered up, hoovered up by Russell Oxford and his team, amongst many other things, into an overwhelming case which I just can't figure out, perhaps like yourself, as to why or how he thought he was going to get away with that, I mean, and also why at seventy three.
A time to retire for all of us, isn't it?
Well there is.
Seventy three and tied up in the drug trade and murder.
So yeah, it's an extraordinary end to what could have been a glittering career. If he'd stayed well more on the straight and narrow and not as you say, not just cross the line, but across the planet.
I think he was tried to appeal the sentence, didn't he there was?
Yeah?
They well he and it was his good mate. We should give a shout out to him, the idiot Glenn McNamara.
The yeah.
How he and Roger met him for the first time in around twenty eleven. They are a very odd couple. Why Roger was hooking up with a guy who was a a pedestrian police officer, I think.
Is because when yeah, I think that's a good way of saying that. Glenn McNamara, former New South Wales cop and I think detective people who'd asked me about him and I said, I've never heard of him. I can't think of anything that he's done and not good, bad, or indifferent. He was just a nothing in the cops.
He made up part of his story. He wrote a book round about twenty ten and he tells this story about how was a detective he was with another detective was on the tale of Warren land Franchi. Just days before land Francie was shot by Roger. He recounts this in his book, says, oh, we couldn't find him, which was bad luck for Warren because a few days later he shot dead. He's not a detective. He's in uniform at Sutherland at the very time. He says, he's working
as a detective and chasing land French. It never happened.
Sounds like a water mythy type came, yeah.
I mean it is. And another one of.
His big cases was the biking Father's Day massacre. I asked somebody who was there, and they said, well, if he was there, he was directing traffic. So he's he's either a fantastist or just a good old fashioned I'm not sure if I'm allowed to say bullshit artist. So he was making stuff up, and yeah, look, it's a mystery. The only thing I can think is that Roger thought he could be useful because he could manipulate him and use him. That's the only thing I can think.
That's and I'm looking completely from the outside, but that's what I was thinking, just some numb school that he would be in awe of Roger and just Roger could get him doing whatever he wanted to do. Now, Roger he passed away this year and there was a lot of attension about that, and it just sort of reflects on the impact he's had in the psyche of their
city in Sydney. Do you, Neil, think this type of thing could ever flourish again or occur again, or do you think there's too many checks and balances for the world to go off balance like it did with this at least pair.
You certainly hope that it wouldn't happen again. And I can't see it happening again. I mean, there's now a lot more supervision within detectives, within squads. You've got the Police Integrity Commission, you've got the Independent Commission against Corruption, You've got those sort of bodies. No, I just can't see it. He was the product partly of his era when that was he'd grown up with that. He went
into the fours at seventeen. That's the way things had always been done, and he didn't sort of realize that the times they were changing musical.
Chairs and the music stop and you were still standing.
Still standing. Yeah, No, I can't see it happening again. And no, I mean there's sometimes a bit of nostalgia, you know. Somebody said once. Oh, you know, we need more good We need more cops like Roger Rogerson to give people a good kick up the ass, like the good old days and the good old days, well they were good old days in some ways, but they're pretty bad as well. When you look at Roger.
I think it's like, all, yeah, you look back in the twenties and the thirties or policing in the depression. You're hard people. They need hard cops. It changes of the evolves. You need smart people, you need strong people as well. But because I know people that were in that same vintage as what Roger went through in the cops, and there were some hard, hard men and women, but with a different way of approaching policing. This is what they were shame when they came in, But the world
had changed. I think we've Roger. What the noise me about him is. I love hard policing. I like the people that have got the reputation of doing the right things. Some great police officers that you know, I know that have gone through and Roger sort of tainted it for a lot of people. Roger tainted it for a lot of people that well, we've got to be careful of that because look what we created. We've created Roger. I think we still need strong characters in the police, but with a moral compass.
That clearly that's right, And I agree entirely with you that people who worked with Roger were tainted and often unfairly and some of them were hard men because they were pretty much were all men back then. But it was a pretty bloody hard job, and most of them, in my opinion, maintained some sort of compass. There might have been a few things, but they weren't running around doing what Roger was doing. They certainly weren't boasting about it.
They weren't seeking the limelight. And you know, sure we do need hard cops. We need detectives who you know, I wouldn't use the word intimidating, certainly not to the public, but you need hard detectives, you know, to who criminals look at and go, oh, I really don't want to run into that bloke or that woman because I know I'm going to be in trouble.
At one hundred percent. And that's sort of tapping into what I was saying. What Roger's created is that it's very easy to slap that down because it's not when I was a young detective, I was inspired by people that had a reputation and I was thinking, look at how they do their work. Roger where I don't like him for a thousand reasons, But what pisces me off is that the hard detectives are being shamed by people
like that. Policing is a robust sports. Sometimes it's a contact sport, ye, and you've got to be prepared to get in there, and if you can do it and hold that moral compass, that's the way to go. But Roger's a classic example of not. But I agree with you are just probably finish off because we've talked about a bygone era. There are too many checks and balances in place now in policing. I can't see it ever
happening again. I think even the media are not so in bed with the police in most circumstances and the courts that you need autonomy between all those areas, the courts, media and the police. So I can't see it happening. If it does, it's going to be fascinating if they can outplate play these two.
I don't think it will ever be as gritty or bad or colorful as that era of the sort of the seventies and early eighties and those two guys, Rogerson and need you know wow, so much happened around them, so many shootings, people who cross their paths, disappearing. I mean, hopefully we're not going to see that again.
Ever.
Well, I'll give a shout out to your book too, Neil, because yeah, as I said, I understood that world, but that's a deep dive into it. So the Kingping and the crooked cop, it's a good breed and I see it now as part of folk law and history at that time. Thanks for coming on, I catch killers.
Thank you for having me cheers.
I think a lot of you have probably seen that TV series Blue Murder about Roger Rogerson and Neddie Smith and things that went on in Sydney's underworld in the seventies and eighties. Well, today I've spoken to Neil Mercer and he's given us a full proper insight into that world. And let me tear it was murky, and I learned things I thought I knew about what went on with
Roger Rogerson and Neddie Smith. But I've got to say the extent of their brazenness and criminality is just sex year old there, and dabe it never happens again.