Suppression orders, gangster-style

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This was published 12 years ago

Suppression orders, gangster-style

THE saga of Tony Mokbel portrays vividly that if you're a big enough wheel in Victoria's underworld these days, you can disappear from view behind a court-ordered suppression of your name. For years. And then pop up hale and hearty.

Back in the gory days, criminal lore was a bit more direct in Melbourne.

Tressed to kill: A young Tony Wright at the time of his brush with murder most foul in a courthouse.

Tressed to kill: A young Tony Wright at the time of his brush with murder most foul in a courthouse.

The most effective suppression order ever issued in Melbourne's old Magistrates Court, a grand edifice on the corner of Russell and La Trobe streets, occurred in November 1979.

It was delivered minus legal argument: just three bullets from a snub-nosed .38 revolver.

Your correspondent was moved this week, while attending the genteel hearings that finally lifted the veil on Mokbel - my first visit to a Melbourne courtroom since that windy day in 1979 - to recall the sound of those bullets.

It was a pretty vivid memory. For a few alarming moments, I was suspected of packing the gun. Weirder still, I was later confused in print with the departed victim. We shall explain.

A handsome young tough named Raymond Patrick Bennett was the target. If you've kept abreast of the rollicking tale of Melbourne's crooks and their propensity to wind up expired from lead poisoning, you've probably heard of him. If not, here's a quick primer.

Aged just 31, Bennett was in tight with the Painters and Dockers, a union whose members tended to have an uncommon knowledge of shotguns. He had led a band of successful Australian thieves, the Kangaroo Gang, across Europe, and gained lasting fame as the inaugurator of the Great Bookie Robbery.

The bookie robbery was a dream job in those days when armed stick-ups were a lucrative business, well before drugs provided crims like Tony Mokbel with riches beyond avarice.

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Bennett's team hit Melbourne's bookies in the Victoria Club, then in Queen Street, as they settled up on April 21, 1976, after the Easter races.

Everyone with half a brain knew the official figure that Bennett's mob lifted, $1.4 million, was a joke. The better informed say $2 million. Wilder speculation soared to $15 million.

Whatever it was, it was a big number in 1979, and it stirred passions among the gang, who included a couple of hard brothers named Brian and Leslie Kane. Brian Kane was in the habit of putting the frighteners on anyone with cash and thought it would be nice if his fellow bookie robbers, particularly Bennett, handed him a larger slice of the pie. Les was plain crazy, much given to sudden violence.

I was wildly happy that police didn't carry guns in courts.

There is a continuity to relationships among Melbourne's gangsters. Les's first wife, Trish, went on to marry Jason Moran, who would suffer a famously early demise. Les and Trish's daughter Suzanne eventually teamed up with Geoffrey ''Nuts'' Armour, who recently was found guilty of shooting dead another Moran, Tuppence, for Tuppence's sister-in-law, Judy Moran. Suzanne is in jail as an accessory after the fact to Tuppence's murder. Tony Mokbel, by the by, was acquitted of a charge of murdering Judy Moran's husband, Lewis.

But back to the '70s. Ray Chuck, as Bennett was known, didn't frighten. After a spot of biffo in a Richmond hotel in which Brian Kane lost part of an ear, Ray Chuck and two of his mates paid a visit to Kane's brother Les at his Wantirna home to ensure there would be no escalation in revenge from him. They bundled Les's latest wife, Judi, into one room while they dealt with Les in the bathroom. When the shooting was done, Les's corpse was dumped in the boot of his pink Falcon Futura and body and car vanished forever. Eventually, Ray Chuck Bennett, Vincent Mikkleson (who had done the ear biting in Richmond) and Laurence Prendergast were charged with murder. In the absence of a body, they walked.

Les's brother Brian was deeply unhappy. Ray Chuck Bennett's days were shortening.

On July 12, 1979, I was in the main courtroom of the old Melbourne Magistrates Court, waiting to report on a case that had brought me to the big city. As a reporter with Albury's Border Mail those days, I had spent months trying to establish that a gentleman of that New South Wales city had helped himself to funds that weren't his. He had fled, only to be nabbed by Victorian police, and I had come to Melbourne to record his fate.

It was a slow morning, and my interest was piqued when a prisoner was brought up from the cells below the court and escorted across the room by two policeman. ''That's Chuck Bennett,'' someone whispered. He was off to another court to face robbery charges.

This seemed more interesting than waiting around for the eventual appearance of my Albury man, so I set out to follow Ray Chuck and his escort.

I'd hardly made it to the door when, as they say in the pulp novels, three shots rang out. Ray Chuck had just made it to the top of a flight of stairs when a man in a dark suit, white shirt, striped tie and sunglasses, with brown hair and a beard, possibly false, suddenly delivered his fully loaded suppression order.

Bleeding, Raymond Chuck Bennett ran back down the stairs, his police escort in pursuit, and collapsed in the courtyard. He died soon after in hospital. His killer, who everyone figured pretty quickly was Brian Kane, simply walked off through a gap in the court's back fence conveniently fashioned by bending a piece of tin aside.

In the ensuing pandemonium, a large plain-clothes policeman noticed I was wearing a dark suit, white shirt, striped tie and had just donned sunglasses. My hair was long and brown, though I wore no beard. The policeman leapt through the crowd being herded from the court and roared at me, ''What have you got on you, what have you got on you?'' Country naive, I went for the inside pocket of my jacket. That's where I kept my press pass. Ill-advised, really. My arm was wrenched up my back and my head was shoved into the stone wall. I was wildly happy that police didn't carry guns in Victorian courts.

It took a little while to establish my credentials, and Brian Kane, who apparently shared my choice of wardrobe, was gone.

A bit less than a year later, the now-defunct Sunday Press splashed a story about Melbourne's most sensational unsolved murders, complete with pictures of the victims.

Right in the centre of this unhappy picture gallery was a photo of me, taken by an Age photographer outside the Melbourne court a few minutes after Ray Chuck Bennett had been gunned down. The caption on my picture read: ''Painter and Docker Raymond Patrick Bennett, 31, was shot by a professional hit-man at City Court on November 13 (sic), 1979''.

The following day, a breathless news editor from the Sunday Press phoned, apologising for the dreadful mix-up and promising to correct it in the following week's edition. I was mildly amused at being confused with a dead member of Melbourne's underworld, but crestfallen when the subsequent correction in the Sunday Press named me as ''Terry'' Wright. Perhaps I should have sought a judge's suppression order.

The police never got Brian Kane for Chuck's murder. Instead, three years later, sitting in the Quarry Hotel, Lygon Street, Brunswick, he was shot in the head and chest by two men wearing balaclavas and wielding those popular .38 revolvers.

Deadly suppression orders were becoming the rage. By 1987, there wasn't a Great Bookie Robber left alive. Ray Chuck Bennett, Brian and Leslie Kane and a fellow named Ian Carroll had all been murdered, Laurence Prendergast plain disappeared in 1985 and the sixth gang member, Norman Lee - the only man ever charged with the bookie robbery, and he was acquitted - was shot dead by police during a stick-up at Melbourne Airport in 1992.

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