Tales from behind bars. Part 2

Picked up the bird, took it up to wintel and said, this might be a long shot, but this pigeon won't nick off. And so we made some phone calls and found outa was registered to one of the prisoner's fathers. Like this woman was in her aiding tongue kissing his mother and then when they strip searched her, well, she didn't care. She just flashed out, flashed out, flashed everything, and there was these little packets of heroin in a bra and.

Mum, I'm Andrew Rule. This is life in crimes. Last time we spoke to Brian Coglan, former prison officer and for racing photographer. He told us a little bit about one of his favorite prisoners, a bloke called Tony Mockbell, and I suspect that this week he's going to tell us a little bit more. Tony Mockbell pretty good company.

Do you offer your things? But what sort of things? Frank, I remember telling a crook one day, I was I don't know how I was short or I needed. And he literally came and said, he's an account with twenty grand in it. Pay your bills. I don't care if you pay us back or not. It's money I'm supposed to not have, basically, And I just looked at him and said, thanks, but no thanks, I said, mate, I planned, yeah, exactly, this is quite early.

And he goes, why not?

I said, mate, I intend to take a million dollars out of this joint over the ten years. I want to work here, you know. I said, well, why would I take twenty grand? It's you know, and I'm made of a job in a month.

You know. It just didn't make sense.

What sort of offender was he?

He was a sex offender. Oh yeah, he was actually a child sex offender.

Really.

He had a place up near Ballarat and right was up that.

Way, and he literally told me where it was buried, where the money was money.

I presume, well, I presumeables cash there.

Oh so when he said an account, yeah.

Well yeah, no, yeah, that's right, it wasn't really an account.

It was buried.

Money was buried in a.

But he couldn't see himself using it for any reason, and he said, the neighbors. I don't know if they were looking for the money or whatever, but he got word that they'd smashed up his house. Now I think it was probably because he was a pedophile. Probably, Yeah, I don't think they were looking for money, but because there's no reason to think it pedophile's got Yeah, I can't even see that Blake's name now, but yeah, he was well I think he had land.

Land and having twenty rand in cash barriage too true.

Yeah, well that could be true.

I've got some land, but I've never had twenty grand buried anymore. So that's one. And do you think he was manipularly even enough to want to do that to get you or you know, on site, Because I mean, I know they do like to manipulate.

There's not much we can do for them, to be honest, you know what I mean, really, I mean, give them an extra pillow?

What can we do for them? Well?

What what? What a mock bell type of a good operator who's a bad man can manipulate an officer to do something illegal that could cost the office of these job. And so now we don't want to tell anybody about that. When you brought in the bla blah for me. Well, that's the first thing we get taught that they're going to set you up. As soon as you do one thing for you, you're in their pocket. You're in their pocket and they want whatever.

And to be fair, listen, I was there for twenty six years. They probably would have flipped one staff member a year. You know, either a female has a relationship with one of them or yeah, you know, a staff member will bring in a phone or yeah that do something along. Phones on phones probably phones were weapons. Were drugs, Yeah, exactly, we had drugs in there. Go now there's drones dropping drugs off.

You know.

It was a reality that drugs got in, right. I will tell you most of it. I will tell you a couple of funny ones that I was thinking about. One day I worked it, walked into a unic or Pennine which was a young offenders unit, and it was surrounded by pigeons, which wasn't unusual because there was guys were always throwing out bread rolls and things for them. And I walked into the pennine yard and all the pigeons flew off bar one.

I'm looking at it.

Didn't think too much about it when in, saw the staff, signed the book, did what I have to do in there, and then I'm walking out, probably twenty minutes later, and all the pigeons fly off again. Pigeon doesn't move. You look at it and I say, it's got some racing bands on its back, and thought, nah, surely not. Anyway, picked up the bird was as tame as anything, picked it up, took it up to intel and said, this might be a long shot, but this pigeon won't nick off.

It go, blah blah blah, kept an eye on.

It, and then we found his father on the other side of the wall and the son both calling it down.

And they trained it.

They trained it. You could call it down, Oh, you could call it down? Yeah, yeah, is that right? Yeah? So and he's sending stuff in. Yeah, well that what's presuming because they kept finding gear in the unit, couldn't work out how it was getting in there. That is wonderful. So that was one of the funny ones. And then another funny what happened to that prisoner? Oh nothing, no, I mean, did he end up? What's gone on? Unfortunately,

Gear for a start, and into it or selling him.

Don't know, I don't know. He might have been pressured to bring it in. There's heaps of reasons why. Yeah, maybe thought it was you know, he wouldn't be suspected because he wasn't in on that sort of gear.

Yeah, you'd be a good candidate. Yeah, it might have been a way to get some money outside organized for mum.

Exactly, or that they won't strip at eighty year old, you know what I mean earn.

Yeah, and so what happened to Johnny over there having the kiss your mum? Probably Yeah, it's probably punishment enough.

Listen.

I know that that picture stayed up on the intel wall there for quite a while of oh, because she was sticking her tongue out and pulling faces, and you know, it was absolutely the.

Funniest thing we've ever seen.

Oh, that's great, And that was one of the good things about that job, because you go into work every day and you just shake your head and go. People on the outs, I wouldn't beleave this, you know, you know, And that's where it was quite interesting working at a place with an edge. You know, it could go off, it could swing. The prisoners used to make allegations about everything, and you.

Know, maybe some of them have been known to tell lies. Yes, some would say they got nothing better to do. They actually are dishonest, some of them.

It was a game to them.

What about some of the fellow officers. Were they all officers and gentlemen.

I listened to be fair because of the way they recruited it poor film. It was very much custom orientated. There were a lot of people persons employed, but there were some big boys. And then there was the Islanders. We had some pretty big Islander officers and make up for some Islander prisoners.

Yes, yeah, well you had to fight fire with fire.

So if you've got a Tonguean, can you get someone or what is ours?

It work well on our side of the fence. The Tonguan's gone on well. With the Samoans on their side of the fence, it didn't go that well. But yeah, for some reason, the staff there were Samoan and Tongan and boys. Well, they never was an issue. You know, they like brothers, you know, they like rugby. Well, yeah, that's like half of them they New Zealand anyway, you know, Yeah, they're like hunging exactly. Yeah, and they're pretty easy going guys.

You know. I've had four teeth knocked out you Yeah, yeah.

Tell us about that. Well, what's your worst day? What was your worst day on the job in twenty six years? Losing four teeth's got to be in the list. Well, I didn't lose it.

They were loosened at the stage, but over time they were I think to be honest, that was from friendly fire from one of the of the islanders. Yeah, who was We were trying to take this guy down who just run at us, and yeah I got I got my teeth knocked out in the backwash of us.

What else happened? I didn't put a smile on your die.

To be honest.

I've only been attacked a couple of times, and one of them was a what we'd call a bail out of the unit. I knew he didn't have an issue with me. I knew, but he was getting pretty agitated and I turned around to speak to another staff man and he jumped me.

Oh.

Now it didn't really hurt me, but he knows jumping staff will get him out of there. He had to get out of that unit. And quite often they do things like that, or they'll do something to it, and then they kill straight up and apologize.

Oh, when you say bailout, it's a voluntary, and he's wanting.

He wanted to get out of the unit and didn't want to lose face and wanted to be seen to Yesh, he's not leaving because he's got issues. He's leaving because he attacked a staff member. So it was all at prison politics. And then another time where that makes sense. I actually this is actually quite quite a funny one. It was another career criminal. He was Aboriginal. Listened, he was our billet. He was a terrific kid, like he

Anyway. So there was.

Another kid who'd been on been on the floor. A staff member had been on the floor for probably about six months and was struggling prisoners weren't getting on with him. He didn't know how to talk to prisoners. He was falling out with staff, he was falling out with people, and anyway, another staff member said, Knacker's go with mister Coglin and learn how to talk to a prisoner who's upset. So we walked on down and he's following me down, and I said, mate, just let me do the talking.

He'll move. There's no drum. There's something going on, but we'll work it out.

So I walked down and opened the door and said to the guy, listen, what's going on. And he was lying on the bed and he goes, I'm not moving. I'm not moving seals, And I said, come on. I said, you know, we'll get you a single cell back tomorrow. I said, we've run out of his room. Anyway, I don't know what was up up his nose or up he was different. And I had this guy behind me and he goes, get that guy out of the cell. I said, no, no, no, I said, we're not coming into

Yeah, that's how close we were.

And so I pulled him together just so he couldn't get a swing in my head basically and just telling him to calm down. Well, he saw the guy who he didn't really like behind me. Anyway, he's taking a swing of mate, but I've ducked. He put my head on his chest and so he couldn't get me all the poor bloke behind me crack got him in the nose, broke his nose.

As claret everywhere.

Oh, oh Jesus, And I'm trying to teach you. Was it meant for you that punch? Once again, I don't know if he would have done it if I was there on my own, But because he had a reason to unleash. He didn't like the other bloke and when none of us will know, are probably real to him, Yeah, exactly. And I didn't listen to this other guy well, he's not in the job anymore. He wasn't great with crooks. He didn't know how to speak to them. He didn't have their respect, if you know what I mean in

Of character for this guy.

So we both went down and I'm expecting him to literally put his hand out and say sorry, Brian. You know, I don't know what got into me. For some reason. Well, he was red hot again. He nearly came across the table again at me. And I was there with the with the liaison with the liaison officer, and we're both looking at each other, going, this is so out of character. Now, I think he was off his head on ice or something. It must have and must have got a taste during

Yeah, that's I mean, police will tell you this, but prison officers must have the same problem.

Sometimes that ice does leads to terrible things. Oh it's a shot mad bad do mad crazy stuff. Yeah, and you're flat out holding them down. Yeah, he's stronger. Yeah, No, it's it's And I don't know why you'd want to be on ice in jail.

You're just speeding off.

You wouldn't seem to be you know, I can understand if you'd want to have a smoke or or chill out in there, but been on ice is not the right place to be.

So some of the other people, you, I mean, we don't want to talk about really bad people too much, but you knew Leslie Camaliary and Lindsay Hamani Beckett, who were the terrible pair who killed the biggest school girls. Now we're not going to dwell on them because better their names are not spoken most of the time, your impressions of them and looking after them, and other prisoner's attitudes towards them.

Yeah, to be fair, they copped a fair burn from the other prisoners because of the future trins are on and they did get burnt a lot. But they were together initially, and then I believe Beckett gave evidence against Camaliary and we had to separate them.

And when you say burn, what sort of stuff.

The other prisoners yell out call them, calling them dogs, rapists and murderers and kid killers.

And just.

Would you have would they be in protection or they were in protection? They're in a protection wing, and they'd be in there with the likes of Andrew Fraser, the lawyer Andrew Fraser, who this show knew quite well. We had him on our show here for hours, and we knew Fraser pretty well. And he he resented being put on protection because he saw it as a deliberate attempt by the authorities to smear him, as as some sort of give up.

He knew the stain of being in protection, Yeah, was, and he was desperate to try and get out of it. Kept writing to the powers of Pee to get him out of protection. And how do you read their decision to put him in protection as a sort of cynical ploy to what do you think Andrew wouldn't have survived in mainstream? He was very arrogant and why he wouldn't talk to a lot of people. Protection was probably the best place for him.

But so you think the system knew better?

I think so. I think so.

There was word also out there that he'd also upset a lot of blokes, a lot of blokes that he'd represented were in there and whether they should have been in there or shouldn't have been in there. But yeah, listen, he didn't like protection. He was a little bit snobbish, to be honest. We actually had a mutual friend in My neighbor was one of his associates, as in he was a lawyer to oh, and so he got wind of that or I told him. I said, listen, do you know Tom And he goes, yes, he said we

He was.

He put his hand up and took blame for the cocaine issues he had and all of that sort of stuff. So you know, as he used to say to me, cocaine is your way of telling you you've got too much money. You know, That's exactly what he used to say to me all the time.

And then.

I did get a bit disappointed with Andrew when he put his hand up for the for the Peter Dwpass conviction. I don't believe there's no way Duwpass would have confessed to him, especially the way he said it and everything.

But this is your guesswork.

This is purely my gut feeling and knowing due Pass and knowing what a piece of work he is, There's no way he would have anyway. That's that's been and gone, and unfortunately Andrew's gone to now, so you know that chapter's pretty much closed.

Of course, Peter Dupaz is the sex killer, one of the worst people in the system, who is going to live and die in jail because of the many crimes he's done. And his relevance here is that Andrew Fraser, the late Andrew Fraser, the criminal lawyer who did almost five years for cocaine charges. He gave evidence against du Pass and was able to get a reward for doing so, and that evidence was enough to convict Dupass of the murder of Mersina hal Vargas, a crime for which he

He was right up there.

He fancied himself, especially with the female staff.

He was actually quite a clever guy.

He designed them kitchens and did he walkways, and it was very good. He was very good at a lot of things, really. But he was in our woodwork department and he designed and built a desk that was thin but could hold a mobile phone. Came apart, really, and for years or for ages, we didn't know about it and all of this, and we knew there was a mobile phone in the un and we couldn't round it. Yeah, and it was inside this wooden thing that probably wouldn't have been more than an inch thick.

But it was so well put together.

Like Japanese jewelery that yeah, yeah, so far, and the craftsmanship was unbelievable really, and I thinking, and you know, he said no, and I thought.

Jeez, I wonder what happened to that?

Yeah, I don't know where that is at the moment, But Hugo got ended up getting bundled off down to Barwin. He didn't want to leave, and put on a hall of a show dragging him out of the place. I don't know why I wanted to stay at Poor Philip, but he certainly didn't want to go to Barwin.

I don't know if he had issues there or whatever.

Just for our listeners, Oli Dietrich alias Hugo Rich was a prolific among other things that I'm robber and his last big sentence was because he he shot us a fellow German I think of Austrian in the face. But Hugo was doing the robbing and the man he shot was a security guard you know, that was delivering cash to a was the Eastern suburbs and he hadn't been

I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. It's a lot funny, but in the jailhouse dark humor side of things when he did come back in because he wasn't out for very long. He came up to me and I said, you know what happened. You know, you've been pinched with a murder. And he said, you know me, Brian, I'm no murderer. I said, mate, it was pretty cold blooded.

Cold blooded murderer, and blah blah blah.

And I did say something like, well, we used to call him Ollie just to annoy him because he was so full of himself. He really did fancy himself narcissist, yeah, complete, And I said to him, you go, the only thing that would be actually funnier is if you go down on this.

And when he did, he wasn't happy.

He wouldn't no.

And you know, he was just a menace.

Was he pretty dangerous bloke, so clever and clever, willing to manipulate, willing to inflict violence all of the I.

Had to talk to him when he come back from court. And now half the time he came back from court and he would have given the judge a bake.

Yes, oh yeah, you know he was encourageable.

He just loved deferring everything, just making it hard. You know, he knew he was going to go down on this, so he just wanted to make it as hard as possible.

Yep, yep.

I don't know if you're going to use his fellow's surname. It's a very common surname. It's a common surname in the way that well, you know that somebody like Carl Williams has got a common surname. But you've mentioned to me before we got in front of a microphone that there's a bloke in there that you thought was relatively unknown to the public and yet a very potent figure behind me bars is that true man with a common surname?

Listen, there are some guys in there. I don't know why.

They're there or who they are, and after a while you don't even bother googling them. You just deal with them as you find them. Now, I found this guy quite charming, quite respectful. Thought, oh gee, he's more like one of these old time crooks. You know, who is this guy?

And I go to the.

MoU or the Major Offenders unit, and I'd say, listen, he's been a model prisoner here. He doesn't put a thing wrong. I've got to get him out of this unit. I've got to clear him out to mainstream, get him out of here. And for some reason they just wouldn't do it. And they just kept saying to me, Brian, you don't realize he's the most influential person in the system.

Really, And were they saying state, They were saying, you know, we don't want to put him at Barwin or something, or just move him around here.

Yeah, he was just moved around the system.

Well, he was moved around Port Phillip, was he But he was nearly always by himself, and he was No.

It wasn't overtly menacing, No, not.

At all, not at all. So those ones, and they they pop up every now and again, you'd see this sort of blow like he wasn't covered in tats, but all the all the top common cheios, all the top banditos go out of their way to try and get in contact with him, try and get messages to him.

So deducing this, you would one must think this is a person with a lot of influence, probably financial, Yeah, because financial buys everything else, isn't it. If you if you're worth millions outside, you can get things done, You can organize things. He must have been high up in some form of criminal endeavor, presumably drugs.

Yes, well, a lot of the o mcgs.

You know, we're trying to get him to get involved or out and and you know I used to it there and think, God, you know.

Who are you? Who are you? You know?

How do you have so much pull in the joint? Now obviously the authorities above my level knew about it, yes, because they refused to put him back out into the mainstream.

Is that man still inside?

That man when poor Philip closed, he was still inside. So I presume he's gone to Barwin.

When when was Port Philip closed again?

It was closed at the end of twenty twenty five deceeventh.

Thirty first, right, so he went to Barben. Yeah, I see. So in your view, one of the most influential prisoners in the system in Victoria probably is now in Barbwan. And you still wonder what it is about him that makes him have so much influence. Yeah, that is intriguing, intriguing that you didn't hear on the grapevine.

Nah, And I don't think even our intel knew exactly because they were very nervous in dealing with him and unsure, Yeah, and just wondering why he had such pull in the system. So, yeah, they pop up, and generally they are the quiet ones, you know, the ones you don't hear about.

The right, the ones that so he acted more like a businessman than a crook.

Correct.

Yeah, he wasn't missing teeth and Nah.

His wife had come in nearly every day near it seemed like, you know, it probably wasn't probably three or four times a week, but she was always coming in.

He didn't donks his mother.

No, he wasn't tissing his mother, although I think he did have a very good looking barrister or someone who used to visit him tourn Oh, you know, but he's.

Yeah, I see out there.

Very interesting. Well, now, Brian, you've did twenty years racing, you've done more than twenty years in the prison system. You've got a few stories to tell. I think you're thinking that you might tell them to people around the traps. Maybe, you know, rutary clubs, whatever it might be, pubs, clubs, weddings, parties.

Anything, and and well I'm unemployed now, so I know I needed. Yes, they didn't take us on at the new prison. We were all dinosaurs and they didn't want any of the old poor Philip Scandinavians.

They didn't want any of the old Port Philip culture at the brand new place. That's absolute, you know joke.

But and now I hear that they're trying to now call the CV prisoners by their first names.

Oh are they? Yeah?

So one legacy of Port Phillips lived.

On is that okay, well let it be would reflect the government of the day, pats. Yes, So, Ryan Coughlan, you've gone from racing to a dinner party in camber Well where someone said why don't you come and work for us? And you did. Twenty six years later you've finished.

Up there, and to be honest, I loved it.

And you're still wanting to get around and do stuff.

Well, I've got all this useless information in my head that a lot of people find interesting. You know, ask anyone who works in a prison. They otherwise get told that. You get you know, pin at a party.

And yeah, yeah, end up.

You know this one? You know that, Yeah, you tell it. I hope we've been down a few of those rabbit holes today. But of course you've only told us probably ten percent of the things you know. And obviously with a podcast you can't be totally frank because it's a broad audience. Yes, and we certain things we don't say, but in a live speaking environment you could be slightly more frank.

You think, so, yes, that's what I think.

Thank you, Brian Cochland. That is the end of the penny section.

Thanks Andrew, it's been a pleasure.

Thanks for listening.

Life and Crimes is a Sunday Herald Sun production for True Crime Australia. Our producer is Johnty Burton. For my columns, features and more, go to heroldsn dot com dot au, forward slash Andrew rule one word. For advertising inquiries, go to news Podcasts sold at news dot com dot au. That is all one word news podcasts sold And if you want further information about this episode, links are in the description.