A Tale of Two Cities (27 page)

The witness said the man dragged her away and grabbed the handgun. ‘I saw this man raise the gun and fire one shot towards the back fence. I just thought it was a cap pistol or someone playing so I thought nothing of it and went back to reading my book.'

It must have been a riveting read.

About two minutes later he heard another shot and looked over again. ‘I saw a person lying on the ground in the middle of the back yard dragging himself along the ground towards the house. He fell to the ground. I presumed he was dead.'

When police were called, the man in the backyard was, indeed, very dead.

Just months earlier the cashed-up Carroll had bought the Mt Martha house from the couple that had rented it to Cox.

So not only did Cox kill his business partner but his landlord.

Dead, Ian Revell Carroll was able to tell police more about the elite team of armed robbers than he ever had when he was alive.

It was clear he had been in a fight before he was shot. He had a bruise on his left shoulder and a bite mark on his left upper arm. His right knuckles were bruised and his left thumbnail was black and bloody. He had cuts and abrasions to both knees.

He was wearing conservative brown corduroy pants and a tee shirt. The only clue that he may have been a gangster (besides the bullet holes) was the gold chain around his neck and
the heavy tattoos over his legs, arms and back. Further examination would show old wounds, including one where he was shot in April 1972.

He must have been a slow learner.

Where Carroll was found near the shed behind the house, a trail of blood was still visible on the grass.

In his pocket was a bloodied Seiko watch, indicating he could have used the old street fighter's technique of using it as a makeshift knuckle-duster.

He had been shot twice with a .38 handgun. One bullet went into the pelvis and created little damage. But the second entered the left side of the chest and went through both lungs, causing him to drown in his own blood as he crawled towards the house to get help.

He was found lying on his back in the yard with his head resting against a trellis.

In the driveway were two parked cars – a Ford Escort panel van and Carroll's Chevrolet utility. The driver's seat cover of the orange Escort was drenched in blood and in the back on a mattress was an Able Baby hammerless .22 revolver also covered in blood.

The front bench seat of the Chev was bloodstained, indicating someone bleeding heavily had hopped into the car from the passenger side and slipped over behind the wheel. There was an empty, black holster under the front seat that would have fitted the bloodied .22.

It was what police would find inside the house that revealed the secrets of the armed robbery team that had pulled the biggest jobs in Australia for seven years.

There was a blood-covered green towel in the bathroom and a partly-cooked meal on the stove.

The house was ‘clean'. There was not one envelope, note, address book or diary that would point to the real identity of the people renting the house.

But there was a mountain of evidence that showed the real nature of their business.

In the hallway was a bloodstained, orange stool directly under a ceiling manhole that was askew and smeared with blood.

There was a dust mark where an object had been moved. In the ceiling space was a vinyl bag containing a wig, a walkie-talkie and a police scanner. A second plastic box contained silencers, a small radio receiver, a machine gun and boxes of ammunition wrapped in a tablecloth.

It was clear police had found the command centre of the payroll gang. And there was more – much more.

They soon found three large wooden chests originally used to import and export parts for Carroll's car business.

The boxes, about a metre tall, wide and long, were topped with tools to look like tradesmen's boxes. But in carefully-made hidden compartments, police would find what Detective Senior Sergeant David Sprague would describe as, ‘One of the largest arrays of weaponry and associated crime equipment ever seized in this state.'

It included machine guns, military semi-automatic weapons, handguns and a pistol stolen from Ireland.

There were stick-on tradesmen signs to use on the side of vehicles during armed robbery surveillance, disguises, security guard uniforms, medical kits that included bandages, painkilling injections, antibiotics and splints.

The official police inventory listed: ‘The hidden compartment in one box contained four revolvers, two armalite rifles, magazines, ammunition, handcuffs, balaclavas, bullet resistant vests,
false vehicle, personal identification signs and stolen Armaguard uniforms. The top sections of the boxes contained tools and overalls, giving the appearance of being a legitimate tradesman's tool-box should they be searched. Other boxes included items such as liquid ammonia and tennis balls for guard dogs, first-aid kit containing pethidine, morphine, motor vehicle ignition barrels, handcuffs, bullet resistant vests, gas masks, hand-knitted balaclavas, false magnetic vehicle signs, magnetic flashing lights, stolen security company uniforms and false moustaches, hair and skin colouring. Two of the revolvers located in the residence were from an armoured vehicle robbery and an automatic pistol was stolen from a Northern Ireland Police Officer.'

In short, it proved that the gang was better equipped, better trained and better prepared than the police who were trying to catch them.

Detectives also found handwritten notes on armoured car movements in Queensland, Victoria and New South Wales.

The blood in the two cars and through the houses showed that Carroll had managed to shoot Cox in the gun battle.

Cox, they say, was prepared for any contingency, and although badly wounded, climbed on the stool to grab his escape kit from the ceiling that included cash, firearms, false identity papers and first aid equipment.

The blood smears in both cars indicated he had a serious wound to the upper left thigh. Police say he tried the two cars before leaving in a third that was backed into the drive just after the shooting.

A Ford panel van was later recovered in Oakleigh. The previous owner was one Santo Mercuri – an armed robber who would later turn killer.

There was a green towel saturated in blood and a pool under the driver's pedals. Experts estimated the wounded man had lost more than two litres. He was in deep trouble.

Cox's longtime lover Helen Deane was a nurse's aide who could help in the short term but she would have known he needed expert medical assistance to survive.

If the injured man went to a local hospital or medical centre a doctor may have linked him to the Mt Martha killing as the news broke. So he and Deane drove to New South Wales, convincing a doctor in Gosford that the wounded man had accidentally shot himself in New Guinea. Cox told the doctor he chose to fly home for treatment rather than risk the poor medical standards there. As a self-inflicted wound sustained outside Australia, there was no need to report the ‘accident' to authorities.

The doctor swallowed the story while Cox swallowed the painkillers. The bullet was dug out, the wound cleaned and the fitness fanatic escapee made a full recovery.

Detectives went through the Mt Martha house looking for clues. Then they returned to the backyard and to a roughly-made shed that was probably once a child's cubby house. Inside, police found two bullets of different calibres, a pair of men's leather sandals, blood on the floor and signs of a struggle, including broken cement sheets that made up the walls. They believed the dispute started in the shed and then spilled into the yard.

Police forensic experts carefully dismantled the shed looking for clues. They found wood, cement sheets and bricks, then a grounding of sand. They dug down – but not deep enough.

The object of the argument was just a few centimetres under their feet – a large plastic barrel designed for home brewed beer.

Six months later police returned and dug again. This time they found the barrel. It was empty. Many years later Dave Sprague, by then a Commander, said he believed the barrel had contained at least $1 million in cash and probably documents such as passports.

‘That's what they were arguing over,' he said.

Cox, or someone acting for him, came back to get the money after police cleared the crime scene in January.

Waste not, want not.

THE child who would eventually become known as Russell Cox was born Melville Peter Schnitzerling in Brisbane 15 September 1949, several weeks before he was due. The tiny premature baby was nicknamed ‘Tim' by his family.

As a boy, he was in and out of Queensland youth training centres, Boystown and Westbrook, before finally being sent to an adult jail in 1966 for stealing a car in Seymour. In 1972, he started to use the name Russell Cox and began his long career as an armed robber.

In 1974 he was arrested in New South Wales over a string of armed robbery and theft charges and sentenced to eleven years. His co-offender was a Melbourne man on the make – Gregory John Workman – the Preston hoodlum shot dead by Alphonse Gangitano in 1995.

In 1975, after an unsuccessful attempt to break out of Sydney's Long Bay Jail, Cox was sentenced to life for the attempted murder of prison officers during the escape bid. For Cox it was just a hiccup and within two years he had learned from his mistakes. Not by reforming but by refining his escape methods.

On 3 November 1977, he broke out of the supposedly escape-proof Katingal Division of Long Bay and soon teamed up with master tactician Ray Bennett in Melbourne.

How come?

Police were to find much later that the escape of some of Australia's most dangerous prisoners were not one-off events.

The Australian Bureau of Criminal Intelligence completed an investigation, code-named Operation GAP, which found that a nationwide network existed to help prisoners on the run. It
found that the group provided escapees with safe houses and fake documents.

The theory was confirmed when it was found that jail breakers and armed robbers Christopher Dean ‘Badness' Binse and James Edward ‘Jockey' Smith used the same safe house in Daylesford at different times while on the run. Gunman Ian ‘Rabbit' Steele was also provided with a fake passport to head to England – a novel twist that sent a convict back to the Old Dart. It did Steele no good. He was later sentenced to life there for murder.

On New Year's Eve 1977, a notorious armed robber was arrested in Northcote in a shootout but a second man jumped from the car and escaped. Police believe it was Cox.

He used forged identity papers to successfully apply for a passport under the name of Gary Nevin, giving his address as Williams Road, Toorak.

In May 1978, prison officers found evidence of an attempt to break
into
Katingal. This was something different. According to police intelligence, Cox and another well-known armed robber had tried to free some mates.

They failed – proving that while you could break out of the ‘escape-proof' jail it was too hard to break in.

Cox was to find more than a partner in crime when he teamed up with Bennett. He would find a partner for life.

In 1978 he met Helen Eva Deane, Bennett's sister-in-law, and they became lovers.

The green-eyed, petite Deane was educated at the Prahran Technical School and had become a qualified nursing aide.

She was blood loyal to Cox, nursing him when he was shot and abandoning friends and some relatives to live life on the run.

Late in 1978 they moved to Queensland but he maintained his links with the Melbourne underworld.

He would fly in key members of the Bookie Robbery team for the jobs. But it cost to enlist the best and on one occasion he just
broke even after masterminding the robbery of the Strathpine ANZ branch of $5780. He later said it cost him nearly $5000 to fly his handpicked crew (including Ray Bennett) from Melbourne and back.

Other jobs were more lucrative – including payroll jobs from the Prince Charles Hospital ($16,618), Royal Women's Hospital ($62,446), Woodlands ($38,000), Boral Cyclone ($21,348), Queensland Railways ($327,000) and Queensland Bacon ($90,329).

Cox stayed on the run not only because he knew how to commit an armed robbery but when to walk away from one.

In November 1983, Queensland police scored a tip-off that Cox was planning to rob the Brisbane railway yards. The armed robbery squad launched a stake-out operation.

Cox walked into the yards, wandered into the canteen and bought a drink. This was his usual practice before a ‘job'. He did his own surveillance, wandering around his target dressed as a worker. He saw two men in railway uniforms but correctly picked the dog with them as a police canine.

When he left, driving an old Valiant, he was pulled over by two members of the squad, who did not know he was their suspect.

Cox was to pull a gun, disarm the two detectives steal their keys, lock the police car and drive off, leaving them unharmed.

While he would have had no compunction about killing police, he knew shots would bring back up – followed by unrelenting pursuit. He knew it was always better to slip away than shoot it out.

COX and Deane lived healthy lifestyles on the run. She was a vegetarian who used herbal toothpaste and he rarely ate red meat.

Standover man Mark ‘Chopper' Read once remarked the most dangerous thing about Cox was the vegetarian curry he
cooked in Pentridge's high security H Division. He was a repeat offender.

Cox fancied German beer and good wine and the couple loved Japanese food. Living on the run did not thwart their international travel plans. They visited Japan and the Philippines using false passports while being hunted around Australia. He later said he also went to the UK, where he worked as a seaman.

Cox managed to stay at least one step ahead for more than a decade because he was smart enough not to play the tough guy. For a violent criminal, Cox could appear remarkably calm. He became an expert at appearing ordinary in extraordinary circumstances.