Underbelly (20 page)

They then diverted the expert's attention by continually talking about his electronic equipment until the Legal Aid
funds were exhausted. ‘He only got through about seven tapes before the cash ran out,' Deaves said.

Commissioner Wood said from the bench that the evidence against the couple had been very powerful.

‘Roll over' witness and former officer JTF16 proved full of malice and without any morality. A search of his home by Royal Commission officers found pipes stuffed with money buried in his back yard, along with a .38 Smith & Wesson service revolver issued to another officer.

The two men had argued so JTF16 stole the other officer's pistol because he knew that losing your weapon was a serious breach for a police officer. JTF 16 was eventually sacked from the force and was last known to be selling cars for a living.

Another example of the task force members' insatiable appetite for corruption also came in Operation Bing, again involving drugs.

Deaves, seconded to the task force from the Australian Federal Police, was part of a surveillance team watching the Five Dock house, where suspected heroin importers Pat and Elizabeth Curry were living.

The couple were being watched when they went to Bangkok. Pat Curry owned a Sydney taxi school and was eventually convicted after heroin was found hidden in the panelling of one of his cabs.

He was interviewed by Haken and Deaves and while he was in custody, all his furniture was stolen, including a refrigerator. ‘We received a note from Curry's solicitor saying there was no furniture in the house,' Deaves told the
Commission. ‘Everything had been taken from the house. Just about everything that wasn't nailed down was gone.'

Deaves said Donaldson, by then the commanding officer in the JTF, had been angry about the theft, insisting the stolen furniture be returned.

‘He (Donaldson) basically said: “I don't care who took it. I want it put back straight away”.' Deaves denied that he or Haken were behind the theft and blamed an officer called John Cushion.

Police also raided the home of an associate of the Currys in the mistaken belief they would find drugs and money. ‘Mr Donaldson blued about nothing being found,' Deaves said.

The task force got its own back for missing out on finding any easy money. When Curry's associate was later arrested on an unrelated matter, JTF6 and Deaves ‘verballed' him.

THE officer codenamed JTF14 was one of the many police – those who appeared before the Commission and those who did not – who had regarded the police brotherhood as invincible. Sticking together in adversity was their mantra – but it didn't last when the rats started to rat on each other.

Corrupt police were uncovered in all sorts of places, and JTF14 was one of them. He was recalled from working on assignment in Great Britain for the Australian Federal Police. He arrived back in Australia to admit he had framed a suspected drug dealer out of misguided loyalty to other corrupt police.

It was a long way to come to be sacked from a cushy overseas posting. At that stage JTF14, a detective superintendent in the Australian Federal Police, was the most senior officer to appear before the inquiry.

He said Ray Donaldson had driven him to a house in inner-city Alexandria to plant a knife near where a drug dealer had earlier been arrested. It was part of a subterfuge to provide a corrupt financial windfall for another officer, Detective Sergeant Richard Paynter, who retired from the force in 1986 medically unfit.

Paynter had cut his arm climbing a corrugated fence during a raid on the Erskineville Hotel to capture a man named Eric John Honeysett in1983 but he wanted to turn the injury into something more lucrative. So he claimed he had been stabbed by a knife supposedly wielded by Honeysett during a scuffle.

There was no scuffle and no knife. An unarmed Honeysett ran out of the hotel into a lane and despite ‘almost everyone from the task force being there' he managed to climb a fence and get onto a roof while being shot at by police, who luckily all missed him. They could steal a barn door but they couldn't hit one.

Honeysett jumped into a backyard and was captured only because he tried to run through the house and stumbled over two large Greek men sleeping in the hall trying to catch a breeze on a hot day. The Greeks fell on top of him as he shouted, ‘You fat bastards.'

Then Honeysett's day rapidly got worse. He was fitted up with a charge of attempted murder of Paynter with
police falsely claiming he was carrying a knife. Honeysett being ‘armed' was necessary, of course, because it justified police shooting at him. The fact that it would mean a man would serve a huge jail sentence for something he hadn't done didn't matter to them.

Haken's account was: ‘There was no knife so we had to put a knife into the scenario somewhere. So the Fed (JTF14) took a knife and threw it back over the fence.

‘Of course, when the scientific guy was photographing the scene the next day he found the knife.' Naturally. Planting a ‘throwaway' for honest colleagues to find is one of the oldest tricks in the bent cop rulebook because the innocent dupe gives flawlessly sincere evidence.

JTF14 corroborated Haken's evidence, saying Paynter told him he was going to claim he was stabbed by Honeysett and asked him to go back to the scene in a car driven by Donaldson and plant a knife.

Two more protected witnesses, JTF 15 and JTF16, said their statements – used to support the case against Honeysett – were false and had been compiled only after police rehearsed their story.

Honeysett, trapped in a web of lies, had done the best deal he could. Finally accepting that the odds of him beating the manufactured evidence and a conspiracy were astronomical, he pleaded guilty to both a drug charge and using an offensive weapon. ‘It was me against the task force,' he told the Commission in explanation of his guilty plea.

The whole charade was a disgraceful example of how far bent police would go to fit someone up with a false charge to suit their own selfish purposes. Morality was discarded as casually as a ‘throwaway' knife.

Even a doctor, who initially said the gash on Paynter's arm did not look as if it was caused by a knife, was pushed towards a conveniently vague conclusion. Police had commented that her ‘failure' to recognise the injury as a knife cut was a ‘pity' because it was crucial evidence against a criminal who had 63 convictions for rape and assault on women.

She said: ‘Where do I sign?'

The fit-up was an almost sadistic act by the police involved. Honeysett faced a possible twenty years in jail for attempted murder of a policeman had he not pleaded guilty to the manufactured charge.

Paynter, who had retired from the force on medical grounds, denied the allegations. But the combined evidence of the guilty Federal policeman, Haken and Honeysett, who emphatically denied he had ever attempted to stab anyone, finally carried the day.

JTF14 paid a high price, despite regaining some integrity by telling the truth about the Paynter sham.

‘It was misguided loyalty,' he said of his involvement, adding his name to the list of police who felt compelled to be corrupt to stay in line with senior officers who had control over their future. ‘(What I did) was utterly inexcusable and impermissible.'

But apparent remorse wasn't enough to atone for his sins. Commissioner Wood killed JTF14's future as a policeman.

‘Do you think you could stay a day longer in the Federal Police?' Wood asked. It was a rhetorical question. The only anwer was ‘No'.

While JTF14's support strengthened Haken's version of what happened, his recall from overseas to testify was puzzling because no incentives seemed to be on offer except being sacked instead of being prosecuted. There was no prosecution of anyone else involved in the scam.

‘I don't know quite what happened,' Haken would write. ‘Someone must have convinced him (JTF14) to say “Well, this happened” and then he'd be okay to go back to England and live happily ever after.

‘You've got a Federal Police superintendent coming back from England saying: “Yeah. Righto. That's what we did.”

‘And there's all these other people saying that's what happened but no prosecutions.

‘I believe Paynter received a $2500 payment as a result of a criminal compensation payment for the (cut arm).

‘If you look at his history, he's claimed for injuries in motor vehicles and other things. Mate, he's the most injured man in history. He shouldn't be able to walk. He should be like Raymond Burr (from the TV crime series
Ironside
) ripping around in a wheelchair.

‘The DPP (Department of Public Prosecutions) hasn't prosecuted the majority of people who ought to have been prosecuted out of the Royal Commission. People haven't asked why. The DPP should be asked to explain this.'

The failure of the DPP to pursue obvious – and in many cases admitted – guilt was disappointing, especially after the stern warning about penalties facing corrupt police issued by the Royal Commissioner at the start of the hearings.

He said police and criminals who were later shown to have lied to the Commission ‘must expect significant penal
sentences – that is, significant periods in jail. It was wishful thinking.

LYSAUGHT and Donaldson were linked by a mutually beneficial friendship. So strong was the link that counsel assisting the Royal Commission, John Agius, accused them of being the most prominent links in a chain of corruption stretching from working police almost to the doorstep of Police Commissioner Tony Lauer.

While there was no suggestion of impropriety about Lauer, he emerged from the imbroglio as an administrator of stunning naivety.

Writing in the
Weekend Australian,
ABC commentator Quentin Dempster nailed Lauer's inability to survive the overwhelming evidence of his ineptitude.

‘A revolver in the library appears to be the only honourable course open to Tony Lauer: pre-emptive resignation,' he wrote.

‘He could jump before he is pushed, admit failure and declare his wish to allow the rebuilding of public confidence in the police force through Wood's pursuit of the truth.

‘At the moment, Lauer's tactics are to maintain a low profile. The silence is deafening.'

Former Independent Member of Parliament, John Hatton, a long time campaigner for the Royal Commission to be set up, called for Lauer to be sacked. ‘The failure of his administration warrants his sacking now,' Hatton said.

In the end, Lauer did resign, perhaps avoiding a more dramatic end to his career. A huge hurdle for him was his support for Donaldson's integrity despite rapidly mounting suspicion to the contrary.

Lauer said he had no doubt about Donaldson's ability to continue in his role in the force. ‘Assistant Commissioner Donaldson has sought and should be granted the opportunity to respond as soon as possible to these allegations,' Lauer said. ‘These allegations stem from some years back when Mr Donaldson was not assistant commissioner.

‘I hope eventually the Royal Commission will start to deal with more contemporary policing rather than these incidents of some time ago.'

Allegations about the $100,000 bribe extracted from Murphy and the role of Lysaught and Donaldson in the corruption had surfaced previously and led to a 1990 Crime Commission inquiry by a judge.

But the police involved put their heads together, as usual, and told concurrent lies, claiming it had never happened. Lysaught and Donaldson were both exonerated.

Without the incriminating eavesdropping from other corrupt officers wearing recording devices, the Royal Commission's inquiry a decade later and subsequent exposure of the corruption might have gone the same way.

This time Lysaught was unceremoniously sacked. Donaldson was told his contract would not be renewed and resigned immediately. But he didn't go quietly.

‘I don't think I will ever recover,' he whined, saying the media scrutiny of his 35-year police career had ‘destroyed my character and reputation.' He said one true thing: that his entire career had ‘been in vain'. No one argued with that.

And in a bizarre reminder that no power in Sydney is mighty enough to change the thinking of established police
about supporting a colleague, no matter how circumstances may taint him, Lysaught got a new job.

A newspaper reported that Lysaught became manager of a block of units in Queensland – the sort of job that usually commands a good salary because it requires supervising the renting of units to holiday-makers. When Lysaught's dodgy background was raised, who came to his rescue? Senior New South Wales police, of course.

The
Sun-Herald
commented: ‘They like a certain kind of policeman up there in the deep north.

‘Disgraced former New South Wales chief superintendent Bob Lysaught's foray into management at Broadbeach's new Capricornia high-rise unit block per the use of laudatory references from senior police, who should have known better, has been given the thumbs up.

‘Capricornia's Body Corporate has approved Lysaught continuing in the new role.'

Those who had suffered because of the actions of bent police did not end up with such a comfortable life.

–
WITH RAY CHESTERTON

‘What Bayeh did was to do what Woolworths did – put people out of business. Not by cutting the prices, just cutting their legs off.'

 

BILLY Bayeh tried to pass himself off as a modern-day Rumplestiltskin, the magical gnome who could spin straw into gold.

No one believed him. They knew the real source of his chunky ‘junkie' gold jewellery and his money was drug dealing: cocaine and heroin, mainly.

Billy's declared taxable income was $35,000 a year as part-owner of a suburban shoe shop. He claimed that somehow he was able to spin that minor wage into a lifestyle that embraced losing millions of dollars in betting, lavish holidays and meeting the mortgage on a million-dollar house.