The survivor of St Kilda

to get illicit sex. It's been that way certainly since World War II, when I imagine a lot of soldiers on leave, including American soldiers, were racing around Melbourne looking to have a good time before they went away to

the battlefields and had a very bad time. And so our bayside suburb has a very racy atmosphere to this day, which has been eroded and diffused a lot by rising real estate prices, which means that a lot of places down there have been gentrified and a lot of places used to be massage parlors or cheap and nasty boarding houses have been fixed up and a lot of fashionable people now live there. However, underneath that gentrified exterior there

still beats a scaley wag heart. And I have to say that sin Kilda and the general area around it still boasts its share of skulldugery, particularly drug dealers. Now there are plenty of drug dealers in the West and in the North, but on the bayside part of Melbourne, sin Kilda is the hub even to this day, and there is living in Saint Kilda a man who we will name. His name is Ian Lesser. Lesser as in Greater Ian Lesser has been a longtime resident of Saint Kilda.

In fact, it seems to me that he has been dealing drugs around Saint Kilda for the best part of fifty years, because he was there in the seventies, and he's there in the eighties and the nineties and so on all the way through. Except ladies and gentlemen. When he had to take a big holiday at Her Majesty's pleasure in one of Her Majesty's gray bar motels. He would do his few years in Pentridge and other places when he got sprung, and then he come out again

and he'd set up business and a way he would go. Now, the interesting thing about this Ian Lesser is that over recent years, and by that I mean most of this century, most of the last twenty years, he has led a remarkably peaceful life down there. He's not hard to find. He's got a very well exposed corner position between Corfield and St Kilda. It's prime real estate in any business, really,

but particularly in the drug slinging caper. The closest bus stop is only a punk kick away Rippingley station just to walk down Glenyrah Road. Those who mix drugs and driving can speed into the street next to his house, which is called Blanche Street. They can hit the brakes, jump out and do the business at his back gate

in a few seconds. And when I was down there relatively recently towards the end of winter, I noticed a young fellow jump out and go to the back gate and do a transaction of some sort very rapidly, and then hop back in his car and drive away. And if you sit around that neighborhood and have a bit of a look, as some people do, you will notice there's always a little bit of activity. Now, some of the neighbors up and down that district are not very

happy about this. They feel that ian lesser, although he is seen by some members of the local football club that would be the amateur footy club over there. They see him as a sort of a club patron, a bit of a club benefactor, a guy who turns up and helps at the footy club. I suspect tips some money into the footy club to help recruit players and all that sort of thing. And interestingly, very interestingly, the amateur Footy Club has always been able to attract some pretty.

The unless a local drug dealer gets to be a big man at the local footy club where all sorts of interesting people play, including young people from around the area and your former school boy footballers and schoolgirl netballers presumably. And this is a very interesting and thorny issue for the parents of those kids, because this blog is helping the club by recruiting players and financial support. Just thought

we'd put that out there, front and square. Now, So what you say, there's a drug dealer and some and killder, Well, yes, but this one seems to go under the radar. It's just amazing. We hear at the Herald Sun. We have images of identical number plates on different cars parked outside his house on different dates. So one set of plates beginning with the letters let's say like bgo, like Bendigo bgo. One day it's on a black Beamer four doors a DAN. Next day you come back, the same number plate is

on a two door convertible. Amazing, they just jumped from carter car. So recently we had photographers and others with phones that take photographs dodging around taking pictures and we got a gray BMW suv. It was photographed next to the house with a very badly attached number plate. Now this is quite a smart car. In other respects, it looks pretty kosher, pretty straight, pretty expensive. But the number plate,

which started with the letters SFS. That number plate was all crooked and skew, as if somebody had just buned it on with one screw in one corner. It was very, very tatty and makeshift. Now no wonder it's tatty and makeshift because that number had belonged to a red Mazda station Wagon until last year. So again number plates that jumped from one car to another, and not even sticking to BMW's. They jumped from red Masters to gray Beamers. So it's open slather now. The car capers aside, the

drug sales have been very solid. Now. I can't vouch for what's happened in the last month or so since we expose some of this in the Sunday Herald Sun. But before that, back in late winter, we noticed that one buyer doing a pick up at the back gate is a senior ELM and a footy club player, another retired player who's the brother of an AFL figure. He gets around the place around that whole district, up and down and around about on an e scooter to work

his patch more efficiently. Now that's showing good modern marketing skills. Instead of walking or taking the tram, he's got an E scooter and then he can ping along. Willy quickly answer a phone, say I'll meet you down on the ex corner. Next thing, he's there on his EA scooter, hands over the gear and picks up the cash way he goes. Providing he's got enough HEAs scooters with enough batteries,

he can just keep going like energize a bunny. One wise head who's bought and sold a lot of goods in his life have said to me, it's like a seven to eleven store. This blog's a hard case. And he's seen a lot of things in a lot of places, but he says he's rarely seen more open and more frequent sales than in the Elstonwick emporium of I Unlesser. He says, it's bizarre how he can keep dealing like

that and he's still standing. He's sort of the last of the Murricans, says my source, a source I know very well who knows a lot of the people around the streets of St Kilda and has known them for many years, which hasn't helped him a lot, because it has been a drug addict of note, and his addictions almost cost him his life and put him in hospital and in jail. So he's had a rough spin from the drugs and he's now well away from them, we hope.

But he still understands exactly what he's looking at when he drives down those streets and takes a look. Now, a lot of the local people are unhappy because they see these things happening. It's obvious some of these people are you know, they live there, They've got kids, others, they've got shops, others, whatever, they're good citizens. They live in what is, in many ways a very pleasant part of Melbourne. It's close to the Bay, it's close to groovy shops and coffee shops and all that sort of

good stuff. And who wouldn't want to be there. But they say that they're tired of reporting around the clock activity at the side gate of Ianless's house. A while ago, this is last summer. In fact, they thought that their prayers had been answered. They thought, Bilki, there's a group of alleged council workers who are wearing high vis vests. And suddenly this group of alleged council workers produced guns and badgers, and all the locals are going, you're beauty,

knock off the drug dealer on the corner. Cops everywhere running everywhere, good news. They're all texting each other and wringing each other and high fiving, And no, they were wrong. The police were there to raid a cannabis grow house, which happened to be close by. They didn't knock off Ian Less's corner emporium. They knocked off a growhouse. And as the officers lugged out dozens of plants to load into a van, locals realized what they think is the truth.

Now it may not be. It might be just perceptions. But the locals' perception is that some crooks get raided and some don't, some crooks get knocked off, and some are untouchable. Now that might be wrong. Maybe the police are playing a long game with a lesser. Maybe Ian Lesser is useful to the place. He's a wise old hound. He knows his way around the underworld. He knows his

way around the drug world. He knows probably a lot of the thieves and receivers and all those people in that seedy underbelly and perhaps the police like to have him as eyes and ears so that they can keep track of various other bad guys around their district. That is quite possible. We wouldn't like to say, you know, is he a police informert don't know? Or is he just lucky? Who would know? It's a very tricky subject in Robert Lesser, that is his name. He hasn't always

been teflon coated, as I've suggested before. In the past, he's had his share of troubles. In nineteen eighty eight, he was sentenced to a minimum of seven years for importing illegal drugs. In nineteen ninety six, which is what eight years later, he was charged with trafficking heroine and

admitted several prior convictions. But with age comes cunning. It seems that the last time Ian Lesser was in trouble was in twenty ten when he and his brother Mark, an alleged part time actor nicknamed Porky by his mates, they are arrest of the possession of one hundred and eighty nine grams of heroin. Now, this heroin was found in a sock. Good tip this, if you want to keep heroin around the place, put it in a sock,

hang it in a tree in somebody else's garden. He was found in a sock in an associate's garden, which is the story in itself. It's possible, listeners that the garden owner wasn't happy about his property being used to stook the gear, as the crooks say, and maybe the owner sold out Ian Lesser to avoid being charged himself. Hard to know now. Ian Lesser is now seventy two, which means he's a pretty big age for someone in

his profession and a survivor. Since that last serious brush with the law in twenty ten, he's been flourishing and as we pointed out, he seems to have a choice a fleet of German cars which are often parked in Blant Street near an old white van, but his usual work car, or at least it was a few weeks ago when I last looked over, there is a brand new black Toyota high lux utility which has often seen at handy drop points anywhere between his house in Elstonwick

there and Fitzroy Street and the amateur footy club over there in AFL Circles, which is not this, but in AFL Circles, the professionals and Kilda footy club, The Saints was once always seen as the competition's nightclub team. I know when I cover AFL football back in the olden days, I often had to cover some Kilder because they were the cellar dwellers. They were the sort of one of the worst performed teams, but they were by far the

most fun. They were glamorous, many blonde players, and many of them were suntanned, and they were the nightclub Kings, and they really look forward more I think to the nightclubs on Saturday nights than playing football on Saturday afternoon. But those days have changed and the Saints are now a very serious professional modern football team. One of the amateur club star players a few years back was a

dashing and pugnacious young fellow called Christian Middleton. That was the name he used when he played for that team. Now his original surname might be more familiar to our listeners. His original surname, probably his real surname, not one on his birthday, is Moran, and he has nothing to do

with the people that make leather couches. He is, in fact the son of the murdered gangster Jason Moran and his wife Trish, who of course is the daughter of the vanished patron docker Les Kane, who vanished way back in about nineteen seventy eight from an apartment in Monturna, which is one of the big chapters in the story

of untold violence in Melbourne. In the past, young Christian Middleton alias Moran would play and then play pretty well and colorful Carlton identities such as mic Gatto and his mates would occasionally come over to that side of town away from Carlton to watch their dead mate's son play.

Funny thing that the Underworld War, the one we call the underbelly War or the gang War, the one that ended so many lives now almost twenty years ago, started as a fight between a new boy called Carl Williams and the old school Moran klan, who were the sort of Carlton Crewe guys, and they were well established crooks the Morans. Interestingly, Ian Lesser, the sort of man for

all seasons drug dealer, is the great survivor. He clearly has a talent for useful connections, as one of his players said to me, And this young man is now a very respected professional in his field. He once worked in newspapers briefly, and he is by way of being sort of newspaper royalty. But these days he calls himself a diplomat, which is interesting. He may well be working for one of the Australia's security services, or goodness knows what. He might just work for the gas and fuel company

for all I know. But he played football for the Amateurs, a big strapping fellow, and he was a bit of an admira of Christian Middleton's game. He said he was a good tough player. And interestingly, on the issue of Ian Lesser, he said, well, I know that Ian is a bit of a crim I know that, and I always knew that, and my father knew that too. But he said, even if he got into trouble now and went to jail or something, I would still if I saw him around, I'd shake his hand and talk to him.

Because the flip side of Ian Lesser is that he he's a rough diamond and he's done bad stuff, but he does actually look after kids that come and play footy there, and he gives kids that haven't got much of a start in the world a bit of a start. He'll buy them the boots and he'll buy them the jumpers and he sort of gives them a bit of a push along and if they're any good, they get matched bays and all that sort of thing. And so

he said. The flip side of Ian Lesser is that you know, it's the bad guy who does a bit of a robin hood. He does some good work, which I found an intriguing proposition, but I guess it's fair enough because most people, really, their behavior and their morals are not so much black and white as shades of gray. And when it comes to shades of gray, Sint Kilda has always had at least fifty of them. Thanks for listening.