A Tale of Two Cities (30 page)

By the age of twelve, Chris was on the road to becoming a gangster. He started as a car thief and house burglar. By the age of sixteen he was a rapist and had convictions for assaulting police and carrying firearms. He was an armed robber and habitually carried a gun before he could vote.

His sidekick in the rape and attempted armed robbery was Laurence Joseph Prendergast: another Melbourne man with a vicious temper, a lack of respect for human life and a love of guns. Many years later they would go missing just months apart and neither body would be found.

The case of the Crown v. Flannery and Prendergast was such a classic that it has been taught in Victorian law schools for more than twenty years. In fact, the case lasted longer than they did.

Flannery was a poor student who would turn violent at the first sign of a problem – and there were many. He left his last school before he had completed year nine but he was neither stupid nor illiterate.

A boy who grew up with him but would take a different path – he became a policeman – said of Flannery: ‘He was a cocky, good-looking kid who made an impression.'

The young Flannery dressed to impress, wearing Cubanheeled shoes, smart shirt, pressed pants, a white trench coat topped with a black Stetson.

Blond and charismatic, as an observer later commented, he had star quality. Quietly spoken and sometimes charming, his sharp image could not hide his filthy temper. One day in church a much larger Greek boy was mocking the service. Flannery smashed him in the face, took him outside and beat him senseless.

Flannery, the theologian, had obviously failed to grasp the concept of turning the other cheek, although he knew plenty about giving cheek.

He began to step out with a teenage girl with a distinct beehive hairdo, a severe face and snappy clothes. She was popular with the young men of Coburg but when she was fifteen she would eventually fall for Chris who was just seventeen. They met at the Heidelberg Town Hall dance where many long-term and more short-term relationships were consummated upstairs in the cheap seats.

Back then she was just a young girl looking for a good time and a little excitement. They went out a few times but drifted apart until years later. When her first marriage was on the rocks she again found Chris, by that time in prison breaking them.

A friend invited her to visit Flannery in jail and this time they stuck – marrying in 1978 while he was still in prison. It certainly saved money on the reception.

To police she became known as Kath ‘Kiss-of-Death' Flannery. She was blindly loyal to her husband and just as intimidating.

Much later a New South Wales Coroner wrote of Kath: ‘Her relationship with him should not be equated with a “Bonnie and Clyde” degree of association but nonetheless I am convinced she possessed a not insignificant knowledge of her husband's criminal activities and the extent of his contact with the criminal milieu. A number of witnesses who knew the Flannerys suggested that of the two, Kath Flannery had the stronger personality.'

One of his close friends when he was growing up was Michael Ebert, who would become a big player in the Melbourne vice scene until he was shot dead outside one of his Carlton massage parlours on 17 April 1980, reputedly by another career criminal who had designs on Ebert's woman. It was a case of all's fair in love and war, the .38 calibre way.

Flannery taught himself the basics of the human body, not to heal but to hurt. He wanted to know about bone, muscle and vital organs and what bullets would destroy them. He had a book of pathology, which he used as a working text. He also played up to his deadly reputation, famously running barbeques with the beer kept on ice in a coffin.

As a teenager he took up with another young armed robber in Alan Williams and their business dealings much later would change the face of policing.

By 1966 he had graduated to adult courts and later served four years for rape. A year after his parole he and Prendergast were charged with attempted armed robbery. He jumped bail and fled to Western Australia, where he became a buyer with David Jones.

He was not looking for a new start, just fresh opportunities. Suspected of robbing the department store in May 1974, he fled to Sydney. There, he was arrested at West Ryde railway station
by one Roger Caleb Rogerson, who described the incident as a ‘very violent struggle … It was a fight to the death, almost.'

Flannery was flown back to Western Australia in an air force transport plane and a straitjacket (thereby missing out on his frequent flyer points and the little biscuits they serve with a cup of tea).

He was acquitted of the Perth crime and immediately extradited to Victoria to answer the earlier charge. Along the way the suburban peacock, failed armed robber and street thug became a paid assassin.

He became a bouncer at Mickey's Disco in St Kilda – a dodgy nightclub frequented by young adults looking for a good time and gangsters looking for a bad one. He began to socialise with people who fancied having a human Rottweiler on tap. People like Ron Feeney, part owner of Mickey's and well connected in the underworld. And like Tom Ericksen, a one-legged private investigator, who tried to play both sides of the fence even if he couldn't jump one.

The evil Ericksen, or ‘Hopalong Tom' as he was known in police circles, was a Machiavellian character. He first employed Flannery to bash and hospitalise a well-known book retailer for a real or imagined indiscretion.

From there it all went downhill.

MICKEY'S Disco was a seedy joint, the sort of nightclub where you could get anything for a price. Not that the price affected the off-duty police who drank there beside hookers and gangsters and – even worse – reporters.

Every now and again a ‘tourist' from the real world would stumble in for a Bacardi and coke and drink to the disco beat of the latest popular tunes, unaware that this was the black heart of Melbourne's underworld. Crimes were planned, spleens vented,
teeth re-arranged and vendettas started on the nightclub's sticky carpet. Off-duty detectives and on-duty gangsters worked side-by-side as heavy-duty bouncers.

And one of the most unpredictable doormen of the whole crew was the well-dressed and slightly unhinged Flannery, who worked under the tutelage of Feeney – a well-known underworld figure and no stranger to violence.

Flannery was ambitious and keen to make a mark (other than the ones he habitually left on the faces of unsuspecting patrons). He didn't want to control the door – he wanted to own it.

When one of the smaller owners wanted out, Flannery jumped at the chance and bought a ten percent share. Feeney still owned 41 percent but maths was never Flannery's strong suit. He started to behave as if he were the boss. And he managed to do what appeared to be impossible: he took Mickey's downmarket.

‘After Flannery had bought the shares, things started to go wrong. His wife Kathy came to work there and the takings started to drop,' Feeney would tell police later.

He said Flannery would invite friends to ‘his' nightclub, including a young gunman, Alphonse John Gangitano, and an older one, Kevin John Henry ‘Weary' Williams.

‘There were a lot of fights and Chris and his friends used to belt people up.

‘Chris was a very hard man and told me on one occasion that he would knock his mother for five or ten grand.'

One night at the club he saw Flannery in deep conversation with former lawyer turned corporate raider Mark Alfred Clarkson, who was sipping on a scotch and dry.

Feeney later claimed that after Clarkson left the club Flannery wanted some free advice. He recalled the conversation:

Flannery:
If you had to get rid of a body, what would be the best way?

Feeney:
Take it ten miles out in the bay and dump it.

Flannery:
No, I reckon, dig a big hole up the bush.

Feeney:
Why?

Flannery:
I'm gonna' tell you somethin'. It was just put to me to get rid of a body. I was told to give a price.

Feeney:
Did you give a price?

Flannery:
Yeah, I was offered fifteen.

Feeney:
Shit, you'd want more than that to have to do that. Why? Who is he?

Flannery:
Ah, some barrister they want knocked off.

Feeney:
Is that what he
(Clarkson)
was here for?

Flannery:
Yeah.

Feeney:
Fucking well – that's not much money.

Flannery:
What do you reckon? I'll tell him twenty thousand. But he's never to be found.

Flannery:
There's no hurry; there's no great hurry. It's got to be done in the New Year.

Feeney:
Are you fair dinkum?

Flannery:
Yeah, I'm telling ya that's what he was here for.

If Feeney had any doubts about the malevolence of his former crime apprentice, one incident stood out in his memory.

‘One night at my place Flannery had a fight with Gangitano, who bit Flannery on the nose. When the fight was over Chris told Kathy to go and get a gun for him. I thought she would have got a shotgun but she came back with a .38. Just before she gave it to him, Gangitano and others with him drove away, so Flannery smacked his missus across the face and accused her of deliberately stalling so the others could get away.'

Shortly afterwards, Flannery sold his shares in Mickey's and Feeney tried to rid himself of the hit man's malign influence. Then someone fired a shotgun through the back windscreen of his car.

The offender was never identified.

But the message was.

ROGER Anthony Wilson was ambitious, smart and a hard worker.

After studying law at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology he began practising as a barrister but he soon saw his real talent lay in the world of commerce.

He married his girlfriend Deidre Schultz in 1971 and they had three children – two girls and a boy.

By the time he was 31, Wilson was beginning to be a player in the business world. He had interests in two private hospitals, two farms and manufacturing companies. But while he could make numbers add up, he must have been a careless judge of character or he wouldn't have teamed up with another lawyer-turned-businessman, Mark Alfred Clarkson, a known New Zealander.

In August 1978 Wilson acted for Clarkson in an action in the Queensland Supreme Court and their relationship soon progressed from client and lawyer to business partners.

Clarkson couldn't raise the funds he needed for many of his grandiose plans. He needed the squeaky-clean Wilson to be his front man. Wilson was respectable but Clarkson's reputation was not.

The scheme was for the young barrister to borrow the money so the two could go about taking over companies, stripping them for a tidy profit.

In June 1979 they began a plan to take over Falkiner Holdings. To do this they first bought a major share of an industrial hardware company that had a major stake in the takeover target.

But Wilson lost interest in stripping the company and installed himself as executive chairman of the industrial holding. Clarkson was left with a debt of $557,672 and he believed Wilson
had a legal obligation to bail him out. Wilson, on legal advice, begged to differ and Clarkson was made bankrupt.

He wasn't happy and he began to tell others of his distaste for the young lawyer. Business partners fall out all the time without it ending with bullets and hit men, but this time it did.

Roger Wilson disappeared some time between driving from his factory in Footscray to his home on a dairy stud farm in Nar Nar Goon, east of Melbourne, on 1 February 1980. His white Porsche was later found in the long-term car park at Melbourne Airport.

The investigation would expose links between business and the underworld and result in a young female witness joining Wilson on the missing list.

It was the time when Flannery's reputation would change from hot head to cool killer and he revelled in the headlines. But it would eventually lead to his destruction as he began to believe he was bullet proof, a belief not shared by a particular Sydney crime boss, among others.

In the months leading to his disappearance, Wilson was worried. He knew he was dealing with ruthless people and he suspected he was out of his depth.

He was dead right.

ROGER Wilson had always stood out. As a student at De La Salle College, he had been a leader, a dedicated student, commanding officer in the cadets and an accomplished singer. He impressed his contemporaries. One of them remained close after they had left school. They formed a singing group and played for the East Malvern Cricket Club.

The former schoolmate described Wilson as ‘level-headed' and a ‘determined, aggressive type who had a very strong desire to succeed.'

In late 1979 the two old schoolmates had a meal in Sydney's well-known Bourbon and Beefsteak Bar. While sitting there, Wilson slumped in his seat so he would not be seen by a man who had entered the bar. The man was Mark Alfred Clarkson.

‘He told me that Clarkson had threatened his life and that of his family,' the friend would later state. ‘He also mentioned that he was concerned that his kids would be kidnapped. I thought this was strange and wondered what Roger was involved in.'

On 30 January Wilson visited his brother-in-law, who later told police: ‘He seemed very uptight that night and mentioned that his life had been threatened.'

It was a story repeated by friends, legal associates, business contacts and even his local golf pro. Wilson was frightened but he decided to go it alone. He did not report the threats to police. By the time detectives became aware of the case he was already dead.

THE first day of February 1980 had been a long day for Roger Wilson, even by his standards. Around 8.20pm, he was ready to leave his West Footscray factory for the long drive home. He had been trying to lock in a contract on big-screen televisions but the deal looked like falling short. He had called his wife a few hours earlier and she noticed he sounded stressed. He said he would talk through the problems of the day when he arrived home.