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And he goes, ‘Yeah, I'll do that.'

There was no way out for me. If I would have objected I would have been fuckin' shot. I was unarmed, I didn't have keys to a vehicle and he made it quite clear it was his way or the highway. I just kept saying to myself, just play it through, it'll be all right, just play it through. Then he put the box in the back of a white
ute, with a black rhino liner that lined the whole thing and a tarp on top of the liner.

Perish goes, ‘You go with Muzz up to the property and I'll get rid of the van.'

He opened the door of the ute for me with his hand on his gun and I saw Muzz get in and Muzz had a piece on him too. From that time on I knew that I was under threat. I was unarmed. If I bailed out I thought my family would be under threat. I just had to play along.

GB
: Did you have any discussions with Matthew Lawton along this trip?

BC
: It was a very quiet trip.

GB
: Could you hear any noises coming from the back of the vehicle?

BC
: Initially but not for long.

GB
: Did you stop anywhere along the way?

BC
: No.

DETECTIVE SENIOR CONSTABLE JOHN EDWARDS
: How long do you think it would have taken you to get there?

BC
: Fuckin' ages. We went this way that took fuckin' hours up to the property, via the Old Pacific Highway, this wild back way. It just took ages. I don't know how long it took to get there but I'm just thinking this guy's not going to survive the trip, he was already hot back at Turramurra. You go along Bucketts Way and then you turn towards Girvan then you get to the top of the hill where there are all these mail boxes so the postie doesn't have to go down to the lots, and there's a dirt road and about a few kilometres down there's a big entry gate. When we got to the gate Lawton got out and unlocked
it. He secured the gate after him, and when the car got to the top gate, I think I could have unlocked that gate, and then he drove the car towards the big shed, which is to the right of the house as you're looking at it. He turned the engine off and said, ‘Let's go in the house.' And I asked, ‘Aren't we going to get him out?' and he goes, ‘No, we'll wait for Mate,' referring to Perish.

According to Curtis' version, Terry Falconer probably died of asphixiation and heat exhaustion an hour or two north of Sydney. The property they arrived at was on Brooks Road, Girvan, surrounded by external and internal perimeter mesh fences almost two metres high. The track to the house was rough and hilly, some six hundred metres through thick bush, passing several ponds and crossing a usually dry creek bed. The house and shed were up on a rise, the house single storey, brown brick and tile, built about twenty years earlier.

It was a poorly designed place with raw-brick walls and varnished-pine ceilings, with mean-sized rooms cramped together. Pictures on the walls included a drawing of villians from 1970s Hollywood movies and the rear view of an attractive and naked young woman. The front lounge room had several big screens and a good collection of action and crime VHS tapes including
Braveheart
,
Mad Max 2
, and a Harrison Ford collection. On the building's left sat a double garage, with a granny flat and a carport out front. Some fifty metres beyond the garage was a green shed, with a large open-fronted section on its left side. The interior of the shed measured fifteen by ten metres, illuminated by six fluorescent strip lights hanging above the concrete floor.

GB
: Did you hear any noises coming from the box at that point?

BC
: No.

GB
: Had you formed the opinion in your mind that he was dead?

BC
: Yes. Perish rocked up hours later casual as all hell, in a four-wheel drive, and I think he said the words, ‘All right, let's get into it.' The ute was then reversed so it was as close as possible to the shed and it was stopped there. He opened up the shed; I was just waiting around, knowing both of them were armed and I wasn't, and then he told me, ‘Get the handle of the box,' so I went to the tailgate side, picked up the handle, slid it out. Lawton picked up the other side, we walked into the shed, put the box down, and there was some kerfuffle about who was dumb enough to leave the fuckin' keys behind [so they cut the padlocks off].

Perish said to me, ‘Give us a hand with this,' and pointed to a big roll of plastic sheeting. We put it down on the ground and rolled it over this huge square, cut it, rolled it over another huge square, he cut it.

And he reiterates to me, ‘Just remember everyone last saw you with the body, they're gonna think you're the killer, even your own mates. You're the one that's been seen, your car, but I'll help ya, I'll help ya get rid of it.' They pick him out of the box, and I remember they rig up a chain, he's dead, there's no dispute, he's totally dead.

GB
: Do you remember how they lifted him out?

BC
: There's a block and tackle but they didn't use that to lift him out, they lifted him out, because Perish wanted to cut off his clothes first—

GB
: Before he was lifted up with the block and tackle?

BC
: Yeah. I remember another thing now. Perish also wanted to extract his teeth prior to lifting him up.

GB
: So he was lifted out of the box by Anthony Perish and Matthew Lawton. Is that right?

BC
: Yes.

GB
: And he was laid down on the ground?

BC
: Yes.

GB
: And what happened next?

BC
: They got in the suits.

GB
: Did you get into a suit at that point too?

BC
: No, not right away. I was standing back.

GB
: And in respect of the teeth, do you know how he pulled them out?

BC
: I can't remember the implements.

GB
: Yep. I imagine it's a fairly difficult process, to pull someone's teeth out though?

BC
: I'm sure it is.

GB
: After the teeth were pulled out, then what happened next?

BC
: Either the clothes were cut off or he was hoisted up and the clothes were cut off. I don't know which order.

GB
: And how did they actually hoist him up using the block and tackle?

BC
: They used the handcuffs, attached the block and tackle to the handcuffs and hoisted him up. I think [Perish] had already thrown me a suit by then. He said, ‘Get
this on.' It was white, like a spray painter's one. I think it contained feet in it.

GB
: After he was hoisted up, what happened then?

BC
: Then they started to, you know, do the job of cutting the guy up. I can't remember what they started cutting him with. That cunt threw a leg in front of me.

He goes, ‘Here, get into it,' passes me an implement, I don't know what it was. I've tried to remember, I can't even envisage it. After he was cut up, they started to package him in plastic bags.

GB
: Was anything used to secure the bags once the parts had been put into them?

BC
: Tape, I think. They then put all the bags to the side, I think it was on a table but I'm not sure. Then all of the plastic sheeting that was on the ground was taken up and put in another bag, then they poured this chemical on, which was so, so grossly bad for you, your mucus membranes and everything was just, I couldn't stay in there, not only was I feeling sick after what I'd just seen and had also done. I walked to the outside of the shed. That cunt kept on checking on me. I was feeling very concerned for my safety, so I went inside with a broom, to try and look like I was participating. When he was happy with that, I took off my stuff and they took off their stuff and he asked me to go outside and check around. He actually asked me to go around and check around the cars. I noticed the ignition keys were in none of them.

He knew what I was thinking, he comes out and goes, ‘Er, you weren't thinking about going, were you? Hey, we've got the keys.' Like it's any other fuckin' day
of the week. Then I went inside the shed. I didn't know what I was going to be facing when I got in there, but I thought if I just keep playing it through like I'm not fazed by it I might get through. I never intended for that guy to die. He didn't even ask him one fuckin' question.

GB
: You stayed there that night?

BC
: They cut off the handcuffs, they burnt the box, the handcuffs, the padlocks, and anything that was used at the front of the property on the left-hand side of the drive. I think I stayed the night there. They were being nice to me all of a sudden. I was pretending to go along with it. For the whole next year after, that cunt had that over my head, or forever really, that I was the last one seen with him alive, and that not even my own guys would fuckin' believe me. At some stage or other the bags were loaded into the ute. The rhino liner was removed and there are some side panels and they put the bags in there. Perish instructed that I go in the ute with Lawton and we drive up to another location. I didn't know where the location was. I went in the car and we drove north along Bucketts Way to a big roundabout near the Pacific Highway.

He pulled up there and I said, ‘What's happening?' and he said, ‘We'll just wait for Mate.'

GB
: Yep.

BC
: Perish turned up some time later and said, ‘You guys take my car and wait for me at the ranch.' He didn't call the property the ranch, he used to call the place at Turramurra the ranch because it had these two big wagon wheels and it looked kind of ranchy. So Lawton
and I got in the four-wheel drive and drove off. I didn't look back, I didn't fuckin' look back. At that stage Lawton was okay with me, he still had a gun. I didn't think at that stage anything was going to happen to me, I thought I'd gotten across the line. I deeply regret my actions and my naivety. I never thought that was going to happen. I'm not guilty of murder. I'm guilty of abduction and I'm guilty of stupidity. I feel better for saying this, I feel better.

GB
: Have the answers you have given as recorded in this interview been made of your own free will?

BC
: Yes.

GB
: Has any threat, promise or inducement been held out to you to give the answers as recorded in this interview?

BC
: No.

•

A few days after Falconer's murder, Curtis went over to Bennie's to collect his car. The men went to lunch in Double Bay and, as Curtis later told police, he said to Bennie, ‘Look, I don't know if you heard or read anything, but Falconer had to go. He was going to rat us out. I'm sorry. I told you it wasn't meant to happen this way.' Then he gave the surprised Bennie $7,000 in cash. The two men went to a hotel and played the pokies for a while and had a few drinks. When they had relaxed, Curtis said in a jovial manner that Falconer had not given him the answers he'd wanted and, ‘He got a bit lippy and he was mouthing off and being smart, so I went and chopped his head off.' Bennie was shocked, although he suspected Curtis was capable of such an act.

It was a bizarre thing to say. Curtis later claimed he'd told Bennie and Tony Martin different stories about what happened to Falconer so that if either of them talked to a third party and word got back to himself, he'd know which one it was. That sounds like something Brad Curtis might do.

It was a thrilling experience for the detectives, listening at last to the account of a murder after an investigation taking over seven years. It had been an arduous feat of persistence and now, thanks to Curtis' evidence, it looked like it was almost over.

Curtis gave more statements, about other crimes he'd committed. Jubelin noticed that the longer he was in prison, the more institutionalised he became, and the less keen to give information. It was something he'd seen with criminals in the past, their manner changing from that of citizen to inmate, concerned with jail talk and resentment. Curtis was also a control freak, and began to fall out with individual detectives, refusing to speak to them, but eventually Tuno got pretty much all it needed from him. The main exception was the murder of Michael Davies on the Gold Coast in April 2002, which he admitted to in conversation but refused to confess to in a formal interview or signed statement unless he was given certain concessions. In the process of making these demands he began to read legal material from the library and became a jailhouse lawyer. After eight months of pushing him about Davies, the detectives stopped asking. Still, what they had was fantastic. Curtis hadn't had to give it all up: the fact was that even though he had been a hard man for many years, he'd had no experience of custody, and of having his family pulled in by police. When the crunch came, he'd
been so unnerved that he'd acted against his own interests, by confessing unnecessarily.

No one else who was at Girvan that day said a word. The Perish brothers said nothing. On 27 January, Matthew Lawton was arrested at the Speedway Service Station at Austral and taken to Green Valley Police Station and charged. Lawton was an old school friend of Anthony's; when Perish had gone on the run back in 1992, Lawton had left his wife and children to accompany him, and stayed by his side for the next fourteen years. It was another example of Anthony's capacity to get his hooks into people.

Lawton did not roll. Jubelin talked to his solicitor when they first charged him, suggesting he might be interested in some sort of deal. Later he visited him in jail, still hoping he could be a potential witness. Jubelin laid it on pretty thick, but in the end nothing happened. Lawton was just too scared, or too loyal, to roll on the brothers.