Last week on Life and Crimes, Rick Wenzelis bought quite a few race horses, and he bought ones that did look like each other, and only one of them was the good horse code of pennzaluss have a closer look, and he has a close look, and he realizes it's all the same horse. And Rinzalez says, he's two envelopes. Here's a thin one and there's a fat one. If you choose the thin one, you put it in your pocket. After today, we don't worry about it. If you take
the fat one, you're one of the team. I'm Andrew Rule. This is Life and Crimes. Last week we looked at the rise and fall and rise again really of Stephen Wood, known throughout racing as the ringing jockey from the notorious regal Vista Royal School ringing at Castadon circa nineteen seventy, but who was also involved in several other ringings before
and after those events. This time we look at how it all unraveled for Stevie, who is these days regarded as one of the most entertaining and funny and oddly enough honest people that you'd ever met. Of course, as many listeners will know. It all comes to a grinding halt when Rick Renzalez good Horse, the ringing Horse Code of Pen, actually pulls up the lame after a race at I think would end or somewhere, and Stevie said that this horse needs a spell, he needs to be
looked after whatever. And the trainer and the trainer's assistant, no one was willing to argue with Rick Renzealeb because he was a bad tempered, foul mouthed, you know, semi violent sort of semi gangster, and none of them wanted to tell him that his good horse, Code to Pen
had a problem. And what the trainer did, rather than work the horse and gallop him and all that because of this suspect leg, he swam him and swam him and swam him and hoped that he would stay fit enough and that his leg would recover and so on.
And Renzella mounted what could have been and what he planned to be a massive plunge in Sydney, ringing in Coda Pen the good Horse for a no good horse called Red Dean or Red Iron Rid and Steve Wood tells the story that he cantered this horse out out into the straight at Randwick got over on his neck and he thought, oh no, this horse is jarring. I can feel jarring coming up through that body leg. He's not right. He's going to go wrong. He'll probably break down.
But what'll I do. The money's on. I've got to get him scratched because he knew that Renzala will have backed this horse around Australia with in the doubles and all the rest of it. He gets around to the start, and because he's a relatively unknown Melbourne or Victorian jockey riding against the cream of Sydney's greatest jockeys, Ethel Mulley, George Moore, all those sort of guys, he hasn't got
any pull, any currency, any credibility with them. When he gets around to the start, he says, excuse me, sir, to the starter, I think my horse is not right. I can feel the jarring in him, and I think
he's lame. And they get him to get off, and then they lead the horse back and forth for the club vet or the starter or somebody, and that official says, oh no, he's all right, And had Steve would have been a better known senior jockey, particularly a Sydney jockey, they would have taken his word for it, but they wouldn't because he was a no name jockey, so they force him to ride in the race. So he gets back on the horse, he jumps out, he's drawn wide.
He tries to lead the field to the first turn and the horse seems to go all right, but in the home straight when he puts the pressure on, he feels it go wrong. A rider ranged up beside him and would said, there's two hundred innutes for you if you'd drop back and let me win, But it was too late. The whole field overtook him and his horse, his actual horse, real name, cod of Pen, pulled up absolutely lame on three legs, and I don't think of a raced again. He certainly didn't race for a long time.
But that was a very bad day for the ringing merchants, and one that Steve would sensed was avoidable because the horse should have been pulled out earlier. They all go back to a flat that they've rented there, and he said the murder was pretty down, and he walked in. He was last there, and Rangela says, oh, here comes out of jock and he grabs a pistol from Fred from Sydney. He was there, the armed bodyguard. He grabs his pistol and points it at Steve Wood and says, ah,
your little bastard, and then laughs. It was all a joke. And so they licked their wounds and they went back to Victoria to do it all again. And what happened, as most people know, is that Renzella, having broken down his good horse code of pen, went and bought another good horse called regal Vista. And regal Vista was a bit too good. He was almost a champion. He won a list of stakes he'd won or run placings in
the most elite sprint races in Victoria. He was one of Australia's best ten sprinters probably and he'd hit a sort of age about six year old, where he could be bought. And Renzela paid what was then a considerable some for him six thousand dollars, which these days might be like paying one hundred and twenty thousand something like that, and he had a plan to ring him in I think in South Australia. But meanwhile he wanted to ring
him in at Casteradon in Western Victoria. And as everyone knows, that is the ring in where Rick Renzella came unstuck because he ran him under the name Royal School. Royal School was another one of his many slow black horses that looked like CODEA Penn. It looked like Code Penn, but it did not look like regal Vista. Bad mistake.
The other thing about regal Vista, he was, apart from being a really good looking, handsome horse with a beautiful head, the sort of horse that race govers and racing people would recognize, he had a big scar on his rump and it was from a paddock accident as a young horse, and the scar was quite distinctive. If you'd seen him
once somewhere, you'd know him from the scar. And of course at Castidon Races, this wise old trainer Jim Serk sees the horse and knows it's regal Vista, backs the horse and that starts a bit of a rush among the bookies, which of course really throws out the re Renzala plan of backing it on the tab in doubles, which is what he's done, because the money goes on
on course. Jim Serk started a gold rush when wise old bookmakers saw Jim Serke backing this horse, they thought, oh, I don't know what's happened here, but if Serk's backing it, we should, so they'd send their runners over to back it with other people, and then other punters would notice that it was being backed and the price was being wound in shorter, and so the more money that went on, the shorter got, the shorter got, the more money went on.
And of course when it wins, as it does beating an absolute crackerjack local bush champion trained by a very fine trainer from the Western district, these stewards are most interested in the events because it's been backed off the map.
It's one and it would appear to be highly suspicious, particularly because Jim Serk, after collecting his winnings from the bookmakers, went to Jack Barling, the trainer of the runner up the horses should have won the race, and said, I think you were beaten by a ring in, and so that put the cat among the pigeons, and that would lead to Renzala being charged and getting struck out for
life and getting jailed. It would lead to Steve Wood being struck out for I think twenty years plus two years for something else, a penalty that he actually had overturned on appeal. In the end, Wood had his penalty overturned and was able to return to riding, which was amazing. But Renzala was in big trouble. And the second part of the Steve Wood story, the one that's not so well known, is that Steve of Wood later takes up training.
He rode successfully as a jockey for a short time again after the scandal, but he got injured in a fall.
Had he not been injured in that fall, he probably would have ridden on for some years and gone okay, because it basically sort of been forgiven by the racing establishment, and a very kind trainer called Brian Courtney offered to rehabilitate his reputation by using him as i think a secondary stable jockey, so that when other trainers saw and other owners saw Brian Courtney putting Wood on his horses, they thought, well, if it's good enough for Brian courtney's
good enough for us. And for a while Steve Wood rode fairly successfully against the odds really in Melbourne, but then he had a fall and that fall kept him out for many weeks, a couple of months say, and at the end of that period, trainers have moved on. He'd been replaced on good horses with other riders. And it's the oldest story in racing. Once you're off the scene for a while and lose the plumb rides, it's
very hard to get back on. And for jockeys, really, the wise jockeys know that the best horse mostly wins the race, regardless of the jockey. The great art of jockeying is to jockey your way onto the best horse. You need to push the other jockeys out of the way and talk your way into riding the better horses, and that is the way the system actually works. Steve would realize his time was up as a rider. He got sick of it. He took out a trainer's license.
Steve Wood later remarried as he would a couple of times, I think four times, and he took out a trainer's license, and he was up in the Northeast. I think he was at Aubrey where he finished his riding career and started his training career at Aubrey, and he was within no time, as they say in racing, eating the paint off the walls. He had a big bill down at the feed shop. He had farious bills. He had bills for renting loose boxes. He had bills everywhere, and he
couldn't pay them. And he thought, well, there's only one thing for this. I better go in for a ring in. So i'ld mate Stevie Wood shorter money. He takes up ring ins just as Rick Wenzela had. In fact he was probably a bit better at them in some respects.
He took a horse called Tilant up to Orange, and of course he did have a better horse to fill in for Tilant, and it won the race, and they cleaned up about twenty three thousand dollars on the punt and cleaned out the bookmakers, all the local bookies at the Orange races, and they drove home to all be very happy. But of course, you know, after paying off a few bills and life goes on, they decided they need to do it again. And I actually think he
did three. He did three in a row. But the most notorious one that Steve Wood did was he got hold of a slow horse called Foden. I remember this horse, Foden, and he obtained a much better horse. I think he had somebody else by it. It was called Nordica, a Nordica. They both chestnut horses, light chestnuts, similar type sprinters, but Nordica was lengths better than Foden, and Foden was actually pretty well a pitney horse from down in South Gippsland.
He bought it from the Hill family, I think, one of whom later became a Stuart Mark Hill. And Nordica, funnily enough, came from a trainer up in the Arra Valley called Wood, no relation to Steve would just by chance, and they looked reasonably like each other, and he took them to broken him, and the good horse was substituted for the slow horse and ran as the slow horse.
But unlike the Renzala wrought, which was fairly sophisticated, the Wrenzala thing relied on having false registration papers so that when the stewards checked each runner, they could look at its brands and then look at the registration papers to make sure it matched. And Renzale's great art as a crook was to have beautifully forged registration papers so that the papers matched that horse, regardless of the name on it. The brand markings and all that matched that horse, which
made it a pretty good trick. And that was a trick that was only knocked out later when they brought in a more sophisticated way of identifying the horses. What Steve Wood did he didn't have access to good forged registration papers, and what he did was the more old fashioned ring in, where he would take two horses to
the races in a horse float and switch them. And so he would lead the slow horse in and give it a look around and give it a pick of grass or whatever, and then lead it back and put it on the float and come out with the fast horse with the slow horses rug on, so it looked the same let's say, same head collar, looking as close
to the other one as it could. And when it was racetime, the theory was that the stewards either wouldn't check them properly, or they would have checked the slow horses brands early in the day and then would assume that everything was okay, and providing they didn't check it
again after the race, you were home and host. And what would happen is if they pulled off a ring in successfully, they would lead the horse away after the race fairly smartly and pretend to take it to be hosed down, and then they would take it out and put it in the float and somebody would drive it away and get rid of it. Either take both horses away or take the fast horse away was the way
to go. And that was a pretty complicated thing to get away with, except you know where, you've got a meeting where the steward's a bit lazier or a bit slack, or having a few drinks or whatever it might be. And on this particular day at Broken Hill, they've pulled off this ring in, they've backed the winner, they've got the money. But one of the visiting people at Brokenhill, would you believe, is a man called Bill Brewer. And Bill Brewer was by this stage a mid career racing stewart.
He's a man in by this stage, he's probably in his forties, and he's quite an experienced steward. And he sees that this horse has won at big odds and won a lot of money, and it's been backed, and he's instantly suspicious, particularly when he sees that it's been
led around by Stephen Wood. Now he knew who Stephen Wood was because Bill Brewer had been the young steward at Castidon when Rinzala had pulled the Regal Vista Royal School wrought several years earlier, and he was suddenly on full alert and realized that probably something was up, and he warned the local stewarts and there was an inquiry and next thing, they've unearthed both horses, and you know, the brands don't match, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera,
and Stevie Wood was banged up. He was charged with serious offenses. The racing detectives came and saw him and interviewed him all this sort of stuff, and long story short, Stevie Wood, who had got away with two ring ins on his third one, he didn't get away with it, and there was evidence led about the earlier ones because bookies put their hands up and said, we remember when he won so and so we think it's a ringing, so on and so forth, and he ended up doing time.
He did time. He was locked up in Broken Hill. Then he was sent to I think graft and Jail, where he did time with serious crooks, including some that he got quite friendly with because he was a jockey. They quite liked him because jockeys is sort of popular with crooks, because crooks love gambling and the reason he was kicked out of Broken Hill Jail so quickly was that on his first day there, he was adopted by these three big, young, tough blugs that were in there
for something, probably fighting or thievery or both. And I think might of them might have been a local rugby league player or something like that. So he had a little bit of local knowledge, and the prison officers like this young guy, local boys, and after lights, Stevie says, the guy below him in the bunk below him bangs on his bunk because Steve's in the top one, being the smallest guy, and he thinks, oh god, what's going
to happen here? Will kill me? And he said, no, mate, we're going for Just drop down on the floor where the screws can't see through the so the peepole and our friendly screws will open the door for us. And he goes, oh, no, I don't want to be in an escape. I'll be in all sorts of trouble. I don't want to be a wanted man. He said, no problem, no problem, it's okay, and so he said just stay low.
So when they get out in the corridor, the guy, his fellow prisoner is in front of him, and he drops down low and crawls on his hands and kne's really quietly along under the level of the peepoles in the other cells. Now it's pretty late at night, it's after lights out. Lights out might be nine o'clock, let's say. And they creep down to the other end of the corridor and they see a pair of blue troup houses and black shiny shoes. It's a prison officer, but it's okay.
It's the tame prison officer, the friend, and he lets them out of this door, and they sneak out on their hands and knees, and once they get out into the yard, they stand up and Steve's completely amused and puzzled and alarmed. But there he is with these three young blokes and he thinks they're leading a prison break. And they said, no, no, it's all right, mate, don't worry. So they go over to a side gate and broke
an hill jail and it's conveniently open. They open it, and one of them bolts down to the local pub before closing time and gets a dozen cans of Stubbies one or the other of beer and brings it back and they sit in the park and they drink beer in the park until just before midnight when the shift ends,
when the prison officers shift will end. Then they've got to go back in, close the door behind them, sneak back into their corridor, drop down again and sneak along so no one else sees them, and back into their else before the shift ends and the Friendly Water goes
off duty and less friendly Water starts again. That route was discovered within a short time because some knark down the street saw one of the guys buying beer and realized who he was and dubbed them in and that is when they were all sent from Broken Hill to higher security jail, in this case Grafton. And so in the end, Stevie Wood, the promising apprentice jockey who went to the dark side, ended up serving time in jail with hardened criminals, including the one I think they called
him the Woolworths bomber. He was a guy that attempted to extort something like a million dollars out of Woolworth's by threatening to blow up the store. He met all these sort of guys in jail. He peld up with one of them and they started One of Australia's first tipping services, and when he came out of jail, he realized that racing, even if he wanted to pursue racing any more, racing was probably not going to allow him to be a licensed person, and so Stevie would in
his late thirties. I think on his third marriage. I think his second wife decided she'd leave during the ringing scandal and the jail scandal. He took up working construction and he learned enough about construction and about business to make his way in the world. And he ended up owning a motel or more than one, perhaps up on the border, and ultimately ended up on the Gold Coast. And now he leads a respectable quiet life. He's worked hard,
he's made reasonable money. He and his wife, who is a Thai national, have a nice property in Thailand, and they owned some apartments in Queensland and they divide their time between the two places. But that is one of those rare stories where people who went wrong get their life back on track and do not end up dead before their time or in jail. Little Stevie Wood got out in time. 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 Heroldsun 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 in the description