Q and A: Armed robbers, Mr Cruel and colourful racing identities

But this is not the usual episode. This is another of our irregular segments of Q and A. That is questions and answered. You ask the questions, and I attempt to answer them if I think I can. A mailbox has been overflowing, and now over to Johnny Burton to ask the questions.

track quickly missing people. When someone goes missing in a sty we do not seem to have the right dogs available to fly in at say six hours notice, twelve hours notice, and pick up the trail and follow it to wherever it leads. Now, if it leads to a body, so be yet, at least you've found the body. If it leads to a dead end, at least you know that that person, the missing person, got to that particular point and then presumably was abducted in a vehicle or

whatever it might be. It would give some answers. And I know that we've talked about this a lot over the last year or two. But until the authorities apply the same value to tracker or trail dogs as they do to other highly trained dogs, such as the ones used a customs to find contraband and so on. Until we do that, we will continue to not find lost people.

All ought to find their bodies much later. And I would suggest that if you were related to a lost person, let's just say a lost child, you'd be much happy to see a trail dog turn up in the first twelve hours to try and find the lost person while they were alive, rather than to see the police producer cadaver dog six weeks later to look for the body of your lost child. I'll let you be the judge of that.

different from some of them. It also meant back in those days, I think that he got better results than some others because he was sober, he was hard working, he did have a great work ethic. I think a personal morality. I think he always thought that he owed it to victims and to their families to find bodies or to find the killer, or whatever it might be. And there's no doubt that a lot of people shared

that opinion of Ron in the past. In retirement, Ron has come to the fore and become well known as the man who who instigated the inquiry that led ultimately to the exoneration of Jason Roberts in the Silk Miller murders of the two police Now that right or wrong, and we weren't going to all the ifs, buts, and

maybe he's here right or wrong. That meant that Ron was going squarely against the prevailing opinion in the police force, and it made him deeply unpopular with many police and ex police, rather than being the popular figure he had been when he worked I think with the Police Association. And so we now have a situation where Ron is a little bit on the outer with many police and

ex police, particularly ex police of his own era. I doubt young police care much about him, and so that might explain that Ron has decided to in retirement to stay in the public eye, to respond to a lot of requests for him to appear on radio, television, whatever it might be, rather than just fade away into the sunset. Ron has never done any harm to me, and I think he's done a lot of good work. Is he always right? I'd say only most of the time.

the subsequent trials of Jason Roberts. A question now from Jay, and I have to say, Jay, whoever you are out there, and in listening to Land, you've put in some excellent questions and we shall read one Now can you say, and maybe you can't say, but what an average day they looked like for an armed robber or that sort of ilk in Melbourne in the nineteen eighties. What the sort of routine these people would have if they had a routine.

you went to, they were collecting cash. This meant that armed robbers had a cornacopia of choice when it came to robbery targets. And it meant that every other day there was some sort of big arm robbery, big or

big enough armed robbery. Banks, building societies, payrolls, they were going off everywhere until the fairly sudden introduction over a relatively short time, say a couple of years, of bank security, where they put in these massive thick plate glass screens that would thump down and all that sort of stuff.

The security actually made the armed robber redundant within a couple of years, and that's when they switched for a while more to cash vans and armored cars, and then eventually those sort of armed robbers almost went out of business.

whatever it might be. They're just pretty basic mostly, and the average safe of a crook in those times would be to get up late and scratch their belly or whichever bits of them they want to scratch, and lays around the place, go down, probably to an inner suburban pub, where they'd meet other blugs of the ilk and they would chat among themselves planning this or planning that, or they would bet crooks, gamblers by nature, by inclination, by habit, and by nature, because how can you be a crook

if you're not a gambler, Because you're gambling your freedom or your life, really, and so the gamble would be big for them. The drink was big for most of them, and those few who didn't drink tended to survive, same with the police. Police and crooks who didn't drink tended to live longer and get along better than those who did.

And the other thing, of course, is they were They were mostly males, these fellows, these arm robbers, and they would run around with naughty girls, bad girls, and girls other than their ever loving wives, because that's the sort of people they were. And now and again they'd plan

a job and pull it off. So they'd have to perps get up early or stay up late to go and look at a place and do surveillance, case the joint, as they say, and they might put on slightly different clothes or wherever it might be, and wander around looking

to case the place. The really good crooks like Russell Cox and these guys would wear something like a gray dust coat and maybe a pair of hornering glasses, maybe a hat or a cap or something, and carry a clipboard something like that, so they'd pass themselves off as somebody they weren't, so they didn't look like an arm

robber merching around. They of smart guys would dress like that, and they'd walk into a place as if they owned it, as if they were supposed to be there, and they would observe things and jot it down on their clipboard, and they would act as if they were there from the electricity company or Talycom or whatever it might be. And actually they were taking notes ready to pull a big armed robbery. These were the very good arm robbers. They weren't all like that.

be a lover's lane element to it. There'd always be someone parking there with their girlfriend or whatever it might be, and there would probably be other nefarious things, like people with stolen cars going there to burn the car or

to strip it or whatever. Ye'd be people kids with maybe twenty two rifles and air rifles going there to play around, shooting at things, all that sort of activity, and I'd be very surprised if there weren't other crimes, not as serious as Rodney Mitchell's murder, of course, but I think where you get lover's lanes in the past particularly, you often got perverts who would go along and look

into cars. And I did know of one group of strappers from Corfield Racecourse in the bad old days who would go to lover's lanes and they would open up a car and they would belt the male of a pair of lovers and flog him and then they would assault the female. And this was very ugly stuff. And I know that when Rodney Mitchell was murdered and the police were concentrating on how to work out who did it.

A relative of mine who worked in racing stables in Corfield, advanced that theory, and I told the police and said, you should be looking at the low life strappers at Corfield because among them are people who are willing to assault and rape people in lovers lanes. As it turned out it wasn't them, but you never know.

inside information next Saturday. And so it did attract in those days. A rag Tag and Bobdale collection of No Goods.

notably and others with Mockbell. The fact is that a man that is known as the musician, who is a protective witness for life, was able to put a USB into a laptop computer and draw out all the material in it, which gave the police a massive amount of information about money transfers from Australia to Greece or wherever, which led the police to Tony mocke Bell. And so that sort of information caught and convicted Tony Mockbell, and it didn't need Lawyer X to put the cherry on top.

I'm not suggesting that there aren't other cases where perhaps her interference will not have some effect.

What happened to that guy I have no idea, but I think a triple shooting, unless he was found to be genuinely insane, he will have served a very long sentence because it was a terrible thing to do. It was really as bad as what Ashley Melville Colston did when he killed the three students in a house in Ashburton. I think it was. It's a similar crime and unless the person was found insane, he would serve a phenomenally long sentence.

But not only other forms of crime. He was a big race fixer, and of course there'd be those around him who would also be painted with the same brush. But George Freeman was probably the first Australian colorful racing identity so called. He wasn't the first of them, he was the first to get that name, and it was a I think he was dubbed that by the media as a way of relaying what he was without actually defaming him.

it at the racetrack. It's just a crazy thing. Even somebody liked Billy Longley, the late Billy Longley, who from men who killed a dozen people or something, career criminal. It was a very sort of sensible chap, which is why he ended up dying in his eighties of old age. He wasn't shot dead, but even he told me once that he dropped a massive amount I think ten pounds or something. It was enough to buy you two or

three houses, a lot of money. He dropped it at the races and discouraged him from betting on horses for quite a while, he told me.

and do something, which often happened with Billy. He would drive up there and do a job and then drive back again. But these days I'm thinking that Sydney because of the big bikey and Middle Eastern crime scene up there where they're all shooting each other as it's in the middle of a wave, which is very similar to the wave we had in Melbourne in the early two thousands. And it will pass eventually because I'll shoot each other until the police get on top of it and it'll

ease up. But the current Middle Eastern and or bikey crime wave in Sydney is easily as big as Melbourne's underbelly underworld gangland War of twenty years ago, if not bigger now.

a girl's skill uniform. And he also told Ron that normal Lee had a house up near Eltham somewhere, and that he knew that because he'd been up there at Normally's invitation to meet him at a supermarket car park to discuss some robbery they were doing. And so this seemed to me a good enough reason that, you know, a detective like Eatles had talked to a dying robber who, although he was a criminal, wasn't known for being a fantasist,

who chose to tell him that particular story. I thought, well, even if it's wrong, it's very interesting that this man would tell this story, and so I researched it and told the story the way that Dale has recounted. And it was interesting because it turns out that you know aeroplanes. The big clue in the Mister Cruel case was that one of the abducted girls, very alert, very intelligent girl, she realized that aeroplanes were turning in the sky above

the suburb where she was being held. And although she was blindfolded, she could hear everything, and she could tell the planes were coming from one direction, turning above the house and heading in another direction. And that is a particular turning point thing that only happens at particular spots around Melbourne a certain distance from the airport. And it turns out that Eltham was one such place back in

the past. There is a marker there that was set up for the pilots to use, and they still continued to use it even after some other people didn't use it. Depending on the weather, that people coming down the coast from Sydney or Brisbane or somewhere would tend to turn at Elthham rather than coming over Sumbury or whatever the

other alternative rute is. And this information meant that the police's concentration on flight paths close to Tullamarine Airport, around Thomastown and those places it was right for them to look at Thomastown and all those suburbs Pascoe Vale, etc. But alpham and surrounding postcodes also qualified, and that made it interesting. What it doesn't mean is that normally did it. It just made it a fascinating possibility that had not

struck anyone else. I really am agnostic about it. I wouldn't like to bet my house one way or the other.

But as recently as this week, I have spent hours talking in this case to a person, a highly intelligent person, a scientist, this person who is convinced that he or she has the answer to the mister Cruel conundrum because of X, Y and Z. I only tell that story not because I think that person is right necessarily, but because it shows the massive interest in mister krule that you Dale are one of thousands of people who are

riveted by it. And in fact, I've even had people from overseas, from America contact me with very complex, detailed theories about who've done it. And one of those theories, which was very elaborated, it took somebody hundreds or thousands of ours of deep research online. This is a guy in America, would you believe, And he came up with the conclusion that mister Krule was a senior journalist formerly at the Age newspaper, someone I know well. I know

him well, and I know his wife well. I used to sit next to his wife at the Age, and this armchair sleuth in America at the end of all these thousands of ours deduced that mister Krule was this senior Melbourne journalist. I have to say it was a highly circumstantial case and I don't believe it.

the reality of the crimes committed by these crooks? Or do you believe that they understood the reality but held a belief that the prison conditions were still too brutal in the seventies and eighties.

having a tame prisoner. They're fascinated by prisoners, and often that is females out in the world who are bored with their lives, who find the idea of being in touch with a prisoner that gives them thrill basically, which is why prison waiting rooms and we've said this often, John, Prison waiting rooms, as I've noticed over the years, are full of women there to visit blokes who by and

large don't deserve to be visited. And not always, but quite often, there are women in there with kids and someone who are very devoted and very kindly and very well meaning, and they're there to support and comfort someone who when that person gets out, doesn't treat them very well at all. So a mixture of motives with those things. Those people that help Denning with safe houses and so on, I think they got a sort of a vicarious thrilled

dealing with dangerous guys. I've got a safe house, and you know, this man on the run has come to stay at my safe house, and no one else knows. It's a big secret between me and you know, mister X and mister Y, and we're the only ones who know where he is. And it gives them sort of spy versus spy thrill. And I'm not sure that that was a good enough reason to do it. Also, prison conditions were pretty bad, and back in those days, a lot of crooks did get very woefully beaten up by

police and things like that, and by prison officers. So you know, some prisoners had some pretty legitimate beefs, but also they were pretty legitimate crooks.

it was Schnitzeling. That book by Mark Dappan dapi N is a very interesting insight into Denning's life and crimes and also Coxes.

on a future show. Thank you to those of you who have asked a question, and if you're at all interested, Life and Crimes is on Crimexplus, which is our premium service through Apple Podcasts. There's information on how to access that in the description. And if you are keen on Andrew's work or any of the other work of our fine journalists in The Herald Sun, you can go to Haroldsun dot com dot you and find out how you can read more of it by taking out a subscription there.