Underbelly (26 page)

The result is that Rogerson is caught in a notoriety trap: people who have been convicted or jailed (or are dead) are repeatedly named and blamed in the media because they are safe targets. This emphasises their guilt – and, in the process, appears to diminish that of others.

Rogerson's name has become shorthand for ‘bent cop', erasing the fact that many other police – and a few politicians – were just as guilty, but got away with it because they didn't risk ‘sticking their head over the parapet', as one of Rogerson's former colleagues puts it.

The point is underlined by Darren Goodsir, the then investigative reporter whose book
Line of Fire
underpins much of
Blue Murder
, together with ‘Neddy' Smith's memoirs. Goodsir is high on Rogerson's list of critics (and vice versa) but he says there were worse police than him – ‘cops who did grubby deals with paedophiles and others who did hits.'

But you won't catch Rogerson complaining that he carries the can for the ones that got away. That would be an admission.

Unlike that other well-known Bankstown boy, Paul Keating, Rogerson still lives in the old neighbourhood and sticks to the street fighter code …

If you get knocked down, get up. Keep punching. Don't dob anyone in. Keep smiling. Never admit pain, fear or guilt. Especially guilt.

Roger is a polite, courteous, gentlemanly old fellow these days … but I'm never going fishing with him.
– Mark Brandon ‘Chopper' Read

IT is close to quarter of a century since the then Detective Sergeant Rogerson was drummed out of what he routinely calls ‘the best police force that money could buy' by a police tribunal he dismisses contemptuously as ‘a kangaroo court'.

Being found guilty of internal discipline charges rubber stamped the end of a once-brilliant career that had already capsized nearly two years earlier. He was deeply disgraced well before he finally handed in his warrant card in late 1986.

Under the old New South Wales police regime that produced him, he might have stared down the allegations against him. But any chance he had of surviving the scandals that started to break in 1984 evaporated when John Avery become the state's new Police Commissioner that year.

Avery was a new broom set to sweep out what the media dubbed the force's ‘black knights', and he tackled the job with missionary zeal. Rogerson was not the only name on Avery's hit list, but it was near the top. He was doomed when Avery took over.

Rogerson had been the New South Wales CIB's golden boy – a double-edged reputation. Among Sydney's colourful identities, he was an object of admiration, speculation and suspicion. His network included senior police and heavy criminals, groups that overlapped too brazenly, even by the standards of the day.

Headlining Rogerson's criminal contacts were ‘Neddy' Smith, a violent armed robber and drug dealer, and Lennie McPherson, one of Australia's best-known organised crime figures. When the flamboyant Melbourne hit man Christopher Dale Flannery arrived in Sydney, Rogerson added him to his list of useful drinking buddies.

Rogerson argued that such strategic alliances kept his finger on the underworld's pulse. Another view is that it positioned him to direct the cross-traffic of bribes, inside information, and favours between key gangsters and the headquarters of a police force some rated among the most corrupt in the first world, just behind those of Hong Kong and New York. These two views of Rogerson's ‘strategy' were not necessarily mutually exclusive: a shrewd operator might get both valuable information and bribes, often from the same sources.

In a sense, Rogerson and other ‘black knights' were mercenaries – soldiers for hire. They worked 80 per cent for the community and 20 per cent for themselves. And for a long time they were good enough at their craft – and their
graft – that 80 per cent efficiency was enough to keep the politicians and the people happy.

But as the nature of crime changed, the old checks and balances disappeared. While old-fashioned cops siphoned a ‘tax' from ancient vices – prostitution, illegal gambling – things ran smoothly. Corruption, at a certain level, can be efficient.

No-one denies that Rogerson punched above his weight as a detective sergeant. Whatever his methods, he got results. He made many arrests, won more commendations for bravery and skill than his peers and, by the start of the 1980s, seemed set to crown a brilliant career by one day becoming a superintendent or even assistant commissioner. He certainly thought so, back when things were going well.

There was a precedent for this. In 1966 more than 800 well-wishers attended a farewell dinner for a legendary New South Wales detective, Ray ‘Gunner' Kelly, at the Chevron Hotel.

It was an ecumenical gathering of criminals, racketeers, SP bookies, judges, politicians, doctors, publicans, horse trainers – and a handful of tame journalists who had puffed the Kelly legend. The then Premier, notorious ‘rusty knight' Sir Robert Askin, addressed the crowd – calling Kelly his friend. Kelly, later awarded an MBE, had reputedly helped make Askin a wealthy man. The policeman and the premier retired with assets far outstripping their legitimate incomes. No-one thought to question it, at least publicly, until they died.

As young detectives, Rogerson and his mates worked with Kelly and other ‘well-connected' police: Fred ‘Froggy' Krahe, Don Fergusson, Bill Allen and more.

The story goes that Kelly would test young detectives by asking ‘Would you load a criminal?'. If one answered ‘Yes' he would be transferred into Kelly's squad, but if he said ‘No' he would be sent elsewhere, out of harm's way, and often into a career dead-end.

It was a self-selecting process that meant entire CIB squads followed Kelly's methods of ‘loading' people with incriminating evidence – usually weapons, but also drugs and any other evidence that might be useful in gaining a conviction against criminals who weren't ‘on side' with the sharp operators in law enforcement.

Rogerson says ‘friendly' magistrates trusted police and went along with the system because it kept criminals off the streets. Some, of course, might have been friendly for reasons other than preserving law and order. Such as the disgraced former chief magistrate Murray Farquhar, exposed after years of systematic corruption that involved not just police but politicians, lawyers and, possibly, even judges. From avoiding parking tickets and speeding fines right up to serious perversions of justice, they all thought they were above the law.

But times changed and those who did not change risked being exposed. By late 1984 Rogerson was in disgrace and was ordered back into uniform for the first time in 22 years. Instead, he took extended leave. By then he faced accusations that will dog him all his life – the worst being the shocking allegation he had conspired to have an undercover detective, Michael Drury, shot to help a drug pusher facing court.

He would eventually be acquitted of this (and of attempting to bribe Drury) but as long as the Drury shooting
remains officially unsolved, it hangs over Rogerson.

It was an horrific crime against an apparently honest policeman for doing his duty. Drury was shot twice through the kitchen window of his home, standing near his young daughter. The .38 calibre hollow-point bullets inflicted massive internal wounds.

Drury survived but thought he wouldn't, making a ‘dying deposition' in which he accused Rogerson of attempting to bribe him to ‘run dead' in a big heroin-trafficking case against a then flourishing Melbourne drug dealer, Alan Williams.

Some thought he was delirious or affected by medication but Drury stuck to his guns despite pressure from at least one senior investigating policeman, the late Angus McDonald, who apparently could not or would not believe the monstrous allegation against one of their own.

But ‘Roger' the golden boy was already a little tarnished. He had been under attack by sections of the media – notably well-known investigative reporter Wendy Bacon – and the family and friends of Warren Lanfranchi, a criminal Rogerson had shot dead in intriguing circumstances in 1981.

It is undisputed that Rogerson shot Lanfanchi twice, and that the shots were paced several seconds apart, for reasons that have never been fully determined to everyone's satisfaction. The shooting was ostensibly while police were trying to arrest Lanfranchi at a meeting set up by Rogerson's underworld contact ‘Neddy' Smith.

Lanfranchi's family and his girlfriend, an articulate, attractive and media-savvy prostitute called Sallie-Anne Huckstepp, went public – accusing Rogerson of killing
Lanfranchi because he had robbed a heroin dealer friendly with bent police.

Huckstepp, too, would be killed – she was strangled and found floating in a pond in Centennial Park in early 1986. ‘Neddy' Smith, who had set up the fatal meeting with Lanfranchi, was charged with her murder years later after boasting about it to a fellow prisoner.

Rogerson is not shy about the Lanfranchi shooting. He robustly defends it as a ‘clean kill' of a violent gunman, sex offender and drug dealer wanted for several armed robberies – and attempting to shoot a traffic policeman. He says Lanfranchi was also the prime suspect for a murder in Wollongong: his fingerprints had been found on a baseball bat found near the body of a man who had been bashed to death.

None of this, of course, answers some lingering questions. Did Lanfranchi (as his girlfriend Huckstepp swore) have a $10,000 bribe on him ready to hand over? The police said he did not. Did Lanfranchi produce a handgun? The police said he did, and claimed that was why Rogerson was forced to shoot him – twice.

A coroner's jury subsequently found that Rogerson had killed Lanfranchi while trying ‘to effect an arrest' but declined to find it was in self-defence or in execution of his duty. It was an interesting and perhaps even understandable each-way bet by the jury, though not altogether logical. This can happen with juries which are not convinced of someone's guilt or innocence and invent a middle path regardless of the evidence. It was the jury's way of showing it would not swallow the police version of events.

Despite longstanding media and public disquiet over
the Lanfranchi shooting, fuelled by the dead man's family and by Sallie-Anne Huckstepp's subsequent death, few police rank it as the blackest mark against Rogerson – mainly because Lanfranchi was considered a dangerous criminal who'd attempted to shoot a traffic policeman, an act considered suicidal by many. With good reason, judging from Lanfranchi's fate.

One respected Victorian detective who worked in Sydney in the 1980s, and who has no connection with Rogerson or his supporters, says the consensus is ‘Lanfranchi had it coming – he goes in the stiff shit file.'

But the Drury case is different – although, astonishingly enough, it was not seen that way at first by some police. When Rogerson was initially acquitted, in separate trials, of attempting to bribe Drury, then of conspiring to kill him, other police congratulated him. Rogerson got a standing ovation at a CIB dinner after the acquittal, a show of unity and defiance by ‘the brotherhood' that must have been disturbing for Drury and his family.

But when Rogerson was subsequently charged over holding $110,000 cash in bank accounts under false names, support for him withered – even among so-called ‘Black Knights' in the force. When newspapers ran bank security photographs of an edgy Rogerson waiting to get the secret money, his former supporters knew he had lost the public relations war against Avery's ‘God Squad.' The long-running ‘joke' was finished, at least for the time being.

Rogerson's convoluted explanation of the cash's origins strained credibility – and would, in fact, eventually land him in jail for conspiring to pervert the course of justice. It seemed to some police who had supported him that while
they were passing around the hat to bankroll his defence, he had been stashing cash that publicly implicated him in sinister deals, almost certainly with drug dealers and gangsters – but possibly with would-be cop killers. It looked bad for everyone. For self-preservation, if not moral pangs about Drury being shot, many distanced themselves.

All of which might explain why Rogerson is now far more quiet about the Drury shooting than about the Lanfranchi case. In the 1980s he claimed in court he had never met a corrupt policeman ‘except Michael Drury', but that bravado later gave way to caution.

Now he calmly repeats his version of events. That on his way home on the night Drury was shot, 6 June 1984, he dropped in at the Arnecliffe Scots Club to meet the hit man Chris Flannery. Flannery, he says, had called him earlier in the day about a suspect car he had seen in his street. Flannery thought he was a target, too – correctly, as it turned out, given that he disappeared later.

Rogerson says he had drinks with Flannery and left around 6.30pm. But Flannery's wife, Kathleen, later stated that Rogerson was still at the Scots Club when she turned up about 7.15pm. The time gap is crucial. Then again, the notorious Kath Flannery was not necessarily a reliable witness and might have her own motives for making life hard for Rogerson.

It was suggested, later, that the meeting was all too convenient because it smacked of an attempt to provide alibis. In his book about the shooting,
Line of Fire
, Darren Goodsir theorises Flannery had time to shoot Drury at 6.10pm and then hurry to meet Rogerson to build an alibi. Rogerson says he was with Flannery at the time of the shooting.

So if it wasn't Flannery, who did shoot Drury?

Asked this question, Rogerson pauses and says he heard it might have been another Melbourne gunman, Laurie Prendergast. Then he changes the subject.

He did not become a rogue cop. He was never tempted from the path mapped out for him by his mentors and superiors … It was the path that moved.
– journalist Andrew Keenan, 1986

THE man behind the Rogerson myth is almost 70 now. He is a husband twice over, father of two, grandfather of seven, devoted oldest son (of three siblings) of a sweet old lady who went to church every Sunday on her electric scooter until she was in her 90s. He doesn't wear jewellery and is partial to singlets and cardigans. He polishes his (plain black) shoes with military attention to detail before going out, as most older policeman do. He wouldn't look out of place at a bowls club, an Anzac march or a Rotary meeting. You just know he cuts the lawn dead straight.