A year of bad guys, bad cops and bad calls,Thursday,
December 28, 2006,Gotcha with Gary Hughes
What a year it was, on both sides of the law. Two underworld bosses
departed the scene one using a fake passport and the other in a
coffin. A nobody named John Mark Karr became an instant global
celebrity for falsely confessing to the murder of a Colorado beauty
pageant queen. Two former judges found themselves on the wrong side
of the law. Victoria Polices squeaky clean image lost its squeak,
with half a dozen corrupt officers sent to jail. WA authorities
finally admitted they had the wrong man and released Andrew Mallard
after keeping him locked up for 12 years for a murder he didnt
commit. A conwoman ran rings around police in three states. And the
image of cruise ship holidays was forever changed.
Heres how Gotcha chronicled the year.
In Melbournes turbulent underworld, Italian Mafia figure Mario
Condello was gunned down outside his home on the eve of his trial
on conspiracy to murder charges in February. His killer or killers
have not been caught and we revealed earlier this month that
Victoria Police is now trying to force the key informer in the
trial out of witness protection.
A less permanent departure from the underworld was that of Antonios
Fat Tony Mokbel, who disappeared in March in the closing stages
of his trial on cocaine trafficking charges. It was later revealed
that police had also connected him to two underworld murders.
Mokbel managed to escape with $20 million in drug profits and was
rumoured to have initially fled to Lebannon using a fake
identity
. Since then police have been slowly winding up Mokbel Inc,
seizing millions of dollars in assets, including luxury cars, cash
and jewellery. Also out of pocket is Fat Tonys sister-in-law,
Renate, who was ordered to forfeit the $1 million bail surety she
put up for him.
Meanwhile another underworld identity, Mick Gatto the man who
shot and killed gangland hitman Andrew Benji Veniamin in self
defence - was revelling in his new-found fame and proclaiming that
he was just any ordinary bloke trying to make an honest
living.
It was a bad year for NSW judges Marcus Einfeld and Jeffrey Shaw.
Einfeld was caught out trying to escape a speeding fine by saying
an overseas visitor had been driving his car at the time. The only
problem was the woman he named as the driver had died three years
earlier. Police are still trying to get to the bottom of the
matter.
And just this month the NSW Police Integrity Commission recommended
that former judge Jeffrey Shaw be charged with attempting to
pervert the course of justice after a blood sample taken after he
was involved in a 2004 crash disappeared before police could test
it. The police sample ended up in the possession of Shaw, although
how it got there is still the subject of disagreement between the
judge and the PIC.
In August John Mark Karr was extradited from Thailand to Colorado
after confessing to the unsolved murder of JonBenet Ramsey almost
10 years earlier. DNA tests quickly cleared him, although not
before his name and photograph got to all four corners of the
globe. He was later cleared of child pornography charges police
had lost the evidence and we last heard of him doing the rounds
of celebrity television chat shows.
The award for most brazen criminal of the year must surely go to
elusive Catch Me If You Can conwoman Jodie Harris, who taunted
police across three states during an identity fraud crime spree.
She was eventually caught in Sydney in July after her boyfriend, a
Victorian policeman, tipped off his NSW colleagues. She was jailed
in September for a minimum of three and a half years and ordered to
pay $175,000 in compensation to victims.
The Its About Time award for the year must go to Andrew Mallard,
who was freed in Perth after spending almost 12 years behind bars
for a murder he didnt commit. His appeals had been rejected by a
succession of WA courts before the High Court finally quashed it
because key evidence that would have benefited his case was
withheld by police from his lawyers. We detailed what the key
evidence was. WAs Corruption and Crime Commission is still
investigating who was to blame.
In Victoria the cell doors slammed shut on six corrupt police
officers, including Detective Senior-Sergeant Wayne Geoffrey
Strawhorn. The forces once untainted image took a further knock
when the states corruption watchdog targeted the Armed Offenders
Squad, with public hearings into allegations members had assaulted
suspects. The squad was disbanded, but thanks to some
muscle-flexing by the police union was quickly reborn as the Armed
Offenders Taskforce.
Perhaps the saddest episode of the year was inquest into the death
of Dianne Brimble from an overdose of the date rape drug GHB during
a cruise on P&Os Pacific Sky in 2002. The evidence showed how
callously and brutally she had been treated by the men she was with
on the night she died. But as we reported, a failure by the ships
crew to properly quarantine the crime scene made any possibility of
laying charges unlikely. The inquest, which helped highlight the
dangers of cruising the high seas, is due to resume in
February.
We also looked at inadequate sentences, plea bargaining, the plight
of sexual assault victims, juries, bad driving, why we are losing
the war on drugs, serial killers and domestic violence, the name
but a few.
Id be interested in hearing what you thought were the most
important crime and corruption issues of the year.
sorry i cant link all the links in this essay,
you can know more of Auusie corruptions and gangsters from these
links.
