- 10 months ago
Former Queensland Assistant Commissioner Ross Barnett takes us through his most confounding case. Each crime there was a different MO, and there was only one connection.
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00I'm Ross Barnett.
00:29I always had a bit of a dream that I'd like to work in the armed robbery squad, and eventually
00:36I got my wish.
00:43In an average year in Brisbane, we would have had 100 banked and armoured car robberies.
00:49A stolen Holden station wagon came careering through the windows facing the car park.
00:57These two guys had committed the six largest bank robberies in Queensland history.
01:03Wearing old men masks and armed with pistols, they entered the Commonwealth Bank.
01:07They were becoming more aggressive, more violent.
01:10When I saw the gun, I started to run, and he just fired it.
01:15After being shot, they gave me a cold case file, Operation Moon.
01:35Well this is a much younger me, taken 1975, I was 17, just left high school.
01:45I'd grown up in Queensland, which was a great place to live in the 60s and 70s.
01:50Surfing with my mates on the weekend, going to nightclubs.
01:54Really, on reflection, we were just living the dream, it was a great time of my life.
02:02Well I grew up in a police family.
02:04My father, my uncle and my brother were all serving police officers, all detectives.
02:09So I grew up with the police culture.
02:12I was too young to join the Queensland Police.
02:16So I was working in the bank during the week, in the Westpac Bank at Broadbeach.
02:22Part of my duties was to go with a bank teller every day
02:25to an agency of that branch that was down at Mermaid Beach.
02:30So every morning we'd leave Broadbeach, drive to Mermaid Beach,
02:35park at the back of the shopping centre where the agency was,
02:39and walk up through a laneway to the back of the bank, past a toilet block.
02:46We had a bag of cash with us that we had to deliver to the agency.
02:51The days flowed, if you like.
02:54On this particular morning, as we're walking up,
02:57two masked robbers jumped out of the toilet block, armed, grabbed us both,
03:04dragged us down to the bank, and then they took us out of there.
03:08They dragged us into the toilet block, bound and gagged us, put tape around our mouth,
03:16stole a $4,000-odd that we had with us, and made good their escape.
03:26That was an incredibly traumatic experience for a 17-year-old.
03:32It came completely out of the blue.
03:34And you never know, as you're lying on the ground inside the toilet block,
03:39someone's got a knife very close to your head, cutting the tape off around your ears,
03:44what's going to come next.
03:46For what was to occur even later in my life, I consider that,
03:50you know, a very significant and traumatic event, and it always leaves a mark on you.
04:09It was an era where there were a lot of bank and armoured car robberies going on all the time.
04:21In an average year in Brisbane, we would have had 100 bank and armoured car robberies, mainly banks.
04:32Brisbane itself became a sort of heartland for armed robbery.
04:37And we see the crime statistics grow throughout the mid-1980s into the early 1990s,
04:46where it became bigger than anywhere else in the country.
04:51This is widely known as the golden age of the counter-jumper.
04:54Someone who's prepared to run into a bank, armed, often in company, and terrorising bank staff,
05:03jumping over the counters onto the teller's side of business,
05:06grabbing what they could and disappearing.
05:16This is a career criminal, violent armed robber,
05:20and repeat escapee, Harold John McSweeney, who was to have a pretty significant impact on my life.
05:37Harold McSweeney was serving a period of imprisonment over firearms, illegal firearms
05:44possession. He was a reckless and violent human being who had no regard for public safety whatsoever.
05:54But he was obviously a bit of a schemer and a planner. He had seen the garbage truck approach
06:00the gates of Boggo Road and he thought, well, that's big and that's big and bad enough to get
06:06through the prison gates. Unfortunately, the driver left the engine running. They
06:13commandeered the truck, drove it out through the gates of Boggo Road, just smashed the big steel
06:19gates open. And off they went. They were gone. Just went flat, strapped straight out. You could
06:26see all the one bloke hanging out at the side of the truck. Police believe the men abandoned
06:31the truck for an awaiting car and then fled on foot after police gave chase.
06:38Three of them run down the side of my house, down the next door.
06:42Within minutes, it was a now familiar scene for those living in the streets around this jail.
06:49Police swarming all over the area, heavily armed and following up a spate of sightings.
06:54The dog squad and state government helicopter joined the hunt.
07:00The dragnet closing around him, one tried to steal a car. He was spotted and minutes later,
07:0621-year-old Stephen Waitana was recaptured. Not long after more success, 20-year-old Jason
07:12Nixon flushed from a hiding place and delivered back into custody. Still on the run, Harold
07:20McSweeney, who's charged with stealing with violence. McSweeney remained on the run for
07:26several months. While he was on the run, he and a partner committed a series of increasingly
07:33violent armed robberies in Brisbane. On a Friday in late May, McSweeney and his accomplice
07:47committed an armed holdup on an armoured car at the Brookside Shopping Centre in Brisbane,
07:52for which they had $240,000. The bandits were well prepared and experienced.
07:57They fired three shots into the van when the guards tried to block their path.
08:02I always remember the driver of the truck telling us how he could feel the bullets
08:07thumping into the armour plating under his feet. These men are considered very dangerous.
08:12There were shoppers there. This guy just had absolutely no regard for
08:18anyone else's life or safety. He was just a very violent, violent man.
08:27Sometime over that weekend, a detective who had a very good underworld informant
08:32told us that he'd received very credible information about McSweeney's whereabouts.
08:39McSweeney was in the Toowoomba area, Toowoomba about 90 minutes west of Brisbane. And the
08:44informant told us that if you try to stop him, he will shoot you. So we can't say that we weren't
08:53warned. Myself, several other members of the armed robbery squad were sent to Toowoomba
09:02to look for McSweeney. My partner, Peter Gray, and I found him driving in the street in Toowoomba.
09:12We pulled up behind him at a set of traffic lights. He looked in the rear vision mirror.
09:18He knew a pair of jacks when he saw them. And we were off
09:21on a wild high speed pursuit through suburban streets of Toowoomba.
09:31We were determined not to lose him because it was going to end badly if he didn't get returned
09:40to custody. Doing speeds of 160 kilometres an hour, going through roundabouts, he wasn't even
09:48tapping the brakes. We got an opportunity where he took a corner that we were going to be able
09:56to ram his car sideways into a parked car. We ended up side by side, door handle to door handle.
10:06Without any warning, he did exactly what the informant said. He started shooting as I tried
10:11to get out of the car. He shot me once in the hip. A second bullet blew out the car window just
10:19inches above my head. He commandeered a car from a woman at gunpoint and drove off.
10:32The detective sergeant shot in the hip and thigh after cornering the heavily armed escapee in a
10:38side street. The policeman was treated on the pavement as a big manhunt was launched from
10:43Toowoomba across the Brisbane Valley. An Army Iroquois helicopter was called into the search
10:52and the SWAT and tactical response groups ordered in from Brisbane.
10:57Hopelessly surrounded, McSweeney surrendered and has been taken to Toowoomba for questioning.
11:02I remember just looking down and seeing a spurt of blood just coming continuously out of my hip.
11:18I realised then I was probably in a bit of trouble. Soon after an ambulance arrived to
11:23take the officer who'd lost a substantial amount of blood to Toowoomba hospital.
11:28After surgery the policeman is now satisfactory.
11:32I was incredibly grateful to be alive and I came to reflect it's just how lucky I was
11:39not to have been killed. The job we had to do is to find him and put him back behind bars.
11:45McSweeney told reporters he'd seek out whoever had turned him in.
11:50He told of the poor security in Brisbane jail and when asked if he intended to escape again,
11:58he backed his ability to escape again. And just over a year later he proved that,
12:10you know, he was capable of engineering another escape.
12:15On the 12th of June 1992 McSweeney was due to be taken to the Supreme Court to be sentenced
12:22for the armoured car robbery at Brookside. While he was in jail he was always plotting escape and
12:28he had managed to make a fake gun out of some materials he got inside the prison,
12:36painted it up with black poop polish so it looked quite realistic. He clearly wasn't
12:41searched properly or at all before he was put in the van and taken to the Supreme Court.
12:46In those days the Supreme Court was on George Street in the middle of the city.
12:50The cells were just underground on the first basement level. When he got out of the truck
12:56and was put into a holding cell he produced his fake gun and was convincing enough that
13:02he was able to get past the guards, run up onto the street, jumped onto a City Council bus which
13:10jumped onto a City Council bus which had 20 or 30 passengers, pointed his gun at the head of the
13:18driver and told him to go. Passengers sat stunned and helpless when McSweeney boarded their bus in
13:24Adelaide Street just before nine o'clock screaming abuse and threatening to kill the driver.
13:30He had a look like a gut in his hand. Prison guards chased McSweeney from the Supreme Court
13:36and besieged the bus. They were yelling stop, get down. Almost immediately a guard made his move.
13:43He didn't put the gun down and they shot him. Harold McSweeney is dead.
13:47But live by the sword, die by the sword. The end of a violent career criminal and no great loss.
14:09As one guard stepped out to open a door he was seized from behind.
14:13And then one of the armed robbers starts pouring petrol all over the place.
14:19We're just going to torch this and you will die.
14:271991 was a defining year in my career. After being shot by convicted armed robber Harold McSweeney
14:34I was forced to take a month off work and when I came back
14:38a new challenge with the armed robbery squad was waiting. I was given a cold case file with
14:44some unsolved major armoured car robberies and just given free reign to work on my own
14:51and to see what I could make of it. My investigation was given a code name Operation Moon.
14:59The hauls were pretty substantial, two, three, four hundred, five hundred thousand dollars at a time.
15:10So the money was stacking up but there wasn't any strong evidence to definitively link them with
15:18each other. When Ross Barnett takes that file it would be very, very difficult for him to
15:24conclude that it was the same offenders each time. They wear different masks,
15:31sometimes it's an old man's mask that they wear, other times it's a pair of pantyhose over the head.
15:39The one common denominator is there were two male offenders
15:43using violence when necessary, armed with revolvers in the later stages.
15:49One of the offenders was a tall muscular bloke and the other one was a shorter guy.
15:55And they always slightly changed their MO.
15:59So there wasn't an easily discernible pattern, there were differences in the way that they
16:05acquired getaway cars, names they'd use, so they were very, very clever in that regard.
16:14There was no fingerprints and even if we'd had fingerprints we had nothing to match them to
16:18because they weren't on file anywhere in Australia. DNA wasn't even a thing in terms of crime scene
16:23forensics back then, there were no CCTV cameras, so really in terms of available evidence there was
16:29virtually nothing. It wasn't until later that I discovered the bandits had started their spree
16:38of armed robberies way back in 1985, six years before I was assigned the case.
16:43They started out small.
16:54First one, $47,000, nice money if you can get it,
16:59but nowhere near the big hauls that they were going to take on later on.
17:07Shortly after five yesterday afternoon, a stolen Holden station wagon came careering
17:12through the windows facing the car park. The driver, disguised with a balaclava and
17:16armed with the sawn-off shotgun, then emerged from the car and entered the bank.
17:24My name was Neville Hooth. At that time I was a member of the consorting squad
17:29and part of our role was to support the armed hold-up squad. I can recall that the rear of
17:36the bank had been breached by a Holden station wagon. It was just a glass wall, there was no
17:42bollards. There were two offenders, both obviously males. They acted very quickly, they knew exactly
17:49what they were doing. Both men demanded a particular bag containing more than $200,000 which
17:55he emptied into a plastic garbage bag. Both men then ran back to the car and sped off. It was very
18:00daring and well planned. Professional? I'd say professional, yes. They seemed very well organised.
18:12Now they've decided that they can get their maximum take by basically robbing armoured vans.
18:23On a day when dividends were on everyone's mind, two enterprising bandits took a bigger punt than
18:28most. Wearing old men masks and armed with pistols, they entered the Woodridge Commonwealth
18:33Bank just as the Melbourne Cup was about to begin. The larger offender follows the armed guard into
18:40the bank and he strikes him with his weapon. He pistol whips him, not once, not twice, but three
18:46times, leaving the guard with serious lacerations to his head. The robbers snatched the money sacks
18:52and the guards' revolvers, then fled through the complex, firing at least one shot into the ceiling.
18:57We're seeing this move from opportunism to very willful offending and anyone who gets in the way,
19:04look out. Two gunmen armed with pistols held up the Bramble security staff at the Sunnybank branch
19:14of the Commonwealth Bank. The bigger offender kicked one of the guards, he fell to the ground,
19:20stood over him with a revolver pointed at him. They were quite threatening. Both guards were
19:26disarmed by the gunmen who fled on foot across the car park, carrying the heavy bags of money.
19:32They fleeced the armoured guards of over $400,000 and as they were fleeing the scene, they were
19:39chased by a couple of courageous bystanders. I told him to stop and he dropped his duffel bag and
19:45zipped it open and pulled the gun out. When I saw the gun, I started to run and he just fired it.
19:49I ducked in behind here when I heard the shot go off.
19:53They had no hesitation in demonstrating to everybody that they were armed and dangerous.
20:08On the 3rd of April 1990, the two offenders conducted one of their biggest robberies in
20:14terms of haul. This is a scene, it's almost like it was stolen by Hollywood. At 9.45 this morning,
20:21a Bramble's armoured vehicle pulled into the Sunnybank Hill shopping centre to make a standard
20:26cash delivery to banks. As one guard stepped out to open a door, he was seized from behind.
20:32It must have been extremely terrifying for the guards. They place a chain around one guard's
20:38neck, padlock it there. The raincoat and mask clad bandit demanded money as his accomplice
20:43used a homemade ladder to scale the security van. And then one of the armed robbers leaps
20:49on top of the van and starts pouring petrol all over the place. Open the fucking van! Open the van!
21:01And produces a box of matches. I mean, it's fairly obvious where this is going to go.
21:06Get out of the van, bring the money with you, otherwise we're just going to torch this and you
21:12will die in there. Had there been a spark around that van, we could easily have had three people
21:20killed there and then. I think it was $694,000, their biggest return was realised on that day.
21:30They were becoming more aggressive, more violent.
21:34Something's going to have to give because it would only take someone to say no to them and
21:40then we have a very dangerous situation indeed.
21:54Operation Moon commenced in April 91, just a couple of weeks after the bandits struck a
21:59suburban shopping centre in Brisbane. They got away with plenty of cash, again,
22:05but when they dumped their getaway vehicle, they presented us with an opportunity.
22:11Police converged on the area, later finding the escape vehicle abandoned in Miller's Road on a
22:16dirt track, inside empty money bags. The getaway vehicle had been purchased from a used car yard
22:24by a middle-aged man. The name of the car yard was TJ's. That particular company
22:32had a bit of a gimmick where they would take photographs of happy customers and put them up
22:39in their window of their premises as a bit of a marketing tool. So one of the men we were
22:45looking for potentially had his photo taken when he bought the getaway van.
22:51Local detectives were the first to discover the link. When they found out about the purchase and
22:56the photograph, they went back to the business. They searched for that developed photograph,
23:02but they couldn't find it. So I thought I would go back and revisit that particular
23:08car yard to see what I could do about finding this photograph.
23:11Now, the developed print was gone, but they still had the negatives.
23:20Eventually, I found the negative of the individual buying the car.
23:25It was a pretty exciting development for us because finally, we had a face that we could
23:31definitely link to this major armoured van robbery. Our bandit was smart enough not to use his own
23:38name. He called himself Noel Burke, and the address he provided was also fictitious. So now that
23:44we had the photograph, we could link it to this major armoured van robbery.
23:55The challenge was finding out his real name and his real address.
23:59I obviously shot that photo around other police, including armed robbery squads in the other major
24:05cities. We obviously showed it around to some people we trusted in the prison's department.
24:10We assumed that someone who'd be doing armed robberies like this would have criminal history
24:14somewhere. We drew a blank on those inquiries. No one had seen this guy. He was the invisible man.
24:22So I broadened my search. The one thing that he had told the salesman that he had worked
24:30in the cleaning industry, the salesman thought around the Tweed Heads area.
24:38So we just started going around to businesses, shopping centres, just showing that photo
24:43without giving the people any context of what it was about. Just, do you know this man?
24:47Just hopeful that one day we would get a positive result and then we could go from there.
24:54Why didn't you go public with the photo?
24:57Well, if we'd have gone public, I'm sure we would have got an answer inside a day about who he was.
25:03But obviously then we'd have lost the element of any surprise we had. He could have fled,
25:10you know, fled Australia, gone interstate, changed his identity. We may never have found him.
25:17Initially, I focused my inquiries around Logan and the southern Gold Coast area.
25:23But in early October 91, I tried a new direction.
25:32I went to the Sanctuary Cove resort at the top end of the coast, just started showing the photo
25:39around there. And that's probably when our first really lucky break happened. I went into a yacht
25:44brokerage there, showed the photograph. And it turned out that only two to three weeks before
25:50I got there, this individual had arrived at the brokerage and bought a speedboat for $63,000 cash.
25:59And that's how we're able to establish his true identity.
26:05Who was Noel Burke?
26:07Noel Burke was Bill Orchard or William Orchard.
26:1254 year old, lived in a canal front house at Runaway Bay.
26:18Nice house, nothing particularly striking about it.
26:25But at the back, he had the marina on the canal. I had the $63,000 boat moored on the canal at the
26:33back, drove a Nissan 300ZX sports car, but had absolutely zero criminal history.
26:42Nothing whatsoever, completely and utterly unknown to law enforcement.
26:48So we then started some pretty intensive surveillance on him while we started to
26:52build a picture of this guy. Over subsequent days, surveillance of Bill Orchard led us to
26:58another man that he met at a Runaway Bay hotel. And it turned out that that individual he met
27:06was Gary Sullivan. But Gary Sullivan actually was his stepson. He was extremely fit. He was
27:14an accredited martial artist who had conducted martial arts classes. And that matched, you know,
27:20the behaviour of the bigger of the two offenders. No hesitation in dishing out some violence to guards.
27:32Turned out that Gary Sullivan, again, had absolutely no criminal history whatsoever,
27:37but had previously in the late 60s, early 70s, been a very high quality rugby league
27:44player and in fact represented Australia in the forwards in the 1970 World Cup.
27:51My name is Alan Whittaker. I'm a rugby league writer and historian, but I also write about
28:06true crime and pop culture. So this case is a very interesting intersection of all three.
28:14Well, Gary Sullivan had a very meteoric rise to rugby league
28:18in that he came down to Newtown from Currie Currie in the Newcastle Coalfields.
28:24He came down to Sydney as a 23-year-old, raw-boned,
28:28very lean, lock forward. He represented Australia after only six first grade games.
28:35This is the 1970 World Cup team. Now, the coach is Harry Bath. Harry Bath just happened to be
28:42the Newtown coach that year. So really out of the blue, he picked Sullivan
28:47to tour with these great players. Most fans didn't even know who he was.
28:59Over the 25, Sullivan.
29:04In 1972, Sullivan was selected in the Australian test team. He scored two tries in the first test.
29:10Others come to Australia, Sullivan, Beetson.
29:13He was alongside future immortals, Arthur Beetson, Graham Linglands, Bob Fulton.
29:24He was in very rare company.
29:26Sullivan was in the upper echelon of those players. And he was really seen as a senior
29:41player in the Newtown club when he returned in 1973. The club certainly weren't a bunch
29:48of choir boys, but they had some great clubmen. Michael Williamson, the test winger, they had
29:53Chick Amor, but they also had their fair share of rogues. Most famously, Paul Heywood, the halfback
29:59was the brother-in-law of Nettie Smith. Later in the decade, he would be found guilty of importing
30:05drugs in Bangkok and spend the next 10 years in a prison. And of course, we had Chris Dawson,
30:10future wife killer and arch liar. Newtown in the early 70s, very much a working class
30:20suburb. Even though rugby league was a professional sport, most players were on $50 a win, $20 a loss.
30:28Superstars were only on $30,000, $50,000 a year. And Sullivan was a long way from that.
30:33Sullivan's job at the time was operating a milk run in the Newtown district.
30:42This is a very poignant photo. It's a photo of Gary Sullivan and his first wife, Kay,
30:47with their infant son, Jason, who was born in November 1970, while Sullivan was overseas
30:54with the Kangaroos. Sometime later, he started a second family with his second wife, Heather,
31:00and together they had a daughter. And this was sometime after his football career finished.
31:07Interestingly, the most important family dynamic was the arrival of his stepfather, Bill Orchard.
31:15Now, there's a term in criminal psychology called folie a deux, which is basically a shared madness
31:21amongst two people. I don't think either of these two very nondescript men had many or jobs,
31:27would have had the courage to become an armed robber in their own right. But together,
31:32they formed this partnership that led them down the path of robbing banks and armoured vans in
31:39Queensland. October 25 was a very significant day in the investigation of Operation Moon.
31:54When our surveillance team returned to Runaway Bay, they discovered that Bill Orchard had left
31:58his house prior to their arrival. What we didn't know was that Orchard and Sullivan
32:05were on their way to do another armed robbery in Indooroopilly.
32:09After screaming several threats, a cash bag was quickly handed over, along with both the security
32:14officers' guns. A guard gave chase, but lost sight of the men in a busy car park. As soon as we found
32:21out there'd been an armoured car robbery at Indooroopilly, which got them $116,000,
32:26we knew we had to go in. And so that was the day it all happened.
32:32Time was of the essence. Orchard had returned home to his house at Runaway Bay and Sullivan
32:37had gone to his house in Palm Beach. We had to hit them both in quick succession.
32:43With Bill, he had a six-foot fence at the front of his property. We knew we had to get in quickly.
32:48We didn't know what sort of security he had. We knew he had access to firearms.
32:53There wasn't time to arrange tactical response groups. And these were just
32:58tactical response groups. And these were just basically a small group of detectives on each
33:04property with their sidearms coming up against potentially an arsenal of weapons and some very
33:10desperate men. We knew that Bill Orchard had amassed a lot of weaponry over the last six years.
33:26So we decided the only way to arrest him was to surprise him.
33:34We all jumped the fence, rushed to the property,
33:37gained immediate entry, and we surprised Bill inside his house.
33:44It was very fortunate that we detained him quickly, because when we were searching his house,
33:49we found eight concealable firearms spread around the house, loaded. But most concerningly,
33:57in his walk-in wardrobe, amongst a range of suits that he had,
34:01hanging up on a strap, was a sawn-off, fully loaded shotgun.
34:07So I'm very grateful that we didn't give him the opportunity to get to that room
34:12and get that weapon.
34:20Thank you. This is a photo of Gary Sullivan's house. We were able to observe the gate.
34:32The gate slowly slid open.
34:34The car appeared. It was a male driver, and it actually drove past us.
34:43So I quickly swung the police vehicle around and followed that vehicle with the intention of
34:48intercepting it as quickly as we could. And I brought the police vehicle around to cut the
34:54We were able to apprehend him, take him back to the house. We took Gary inside, and Gary was like
35:10a cat on a hot tin roof, because Gary immediately knew that his life was about to change significantly.
35:17Gary rushed upstairs. He said, I want to show you something.
35:20He was handcuffed. He went into a walk-in wardrobe, and he came out with a handgun.
35:26And he handed it to me. Thankfully, upon reflection, you know, you think,
35:32my goodness, that could have gone bad.
35:51They made admissions to 14 bank and armoured car robberies over a six-year period.
36:02Total net gain of just over $3.2 million. So these two guys that would eventually transpire
36:12had committed the six largest bank robberies in Queensland history.
36:16To make sure these two served a good stretch in jail,
36:20I spent a significant amount of time asking Bill Orchard about the robbery in Sunnybank Hills.
36:26I was the one where they got the most money, nearly $700,000.
36:31But more importantly, it was because where they exhibited the most
36:36violent and threatening behaviour.
36:46They had chained the guard, had him on the ground, effectively like a dog.
37:16I don't know why he was not told to do that.
37:19They had poured petrol over the truck and it splashed onto the guard and threatened to set
37:25it all on fire. Who carried the petrol? Not the bank. Me. Well, I did. You took that other
37:32room with you, didn't you? And I poured petrol on the truck. Did you have any matches with you?
37:39We didn't.
37:42Just ripped the central line of petrol?
37:45Well, we showed them the matches to use them as a means of sort of standover,
37:52as you might call it. But we never intended to use them.
37:57There's not too many steps from that for something to go seriously wrong if they
38:01got any significant resistance, which fortunately they didn't get. I think he always did his best
38:07to minimise what they did and the impact of what they did.
38:11What do you think the feelings of the guards were?
38:17I felt, you know, I did feel sorry for the fellow that I was chained on.
38:27I felt a bit sorry for the guard who I put a chain around the neck of. I mean, it was all pretty
38:32hollow. Yes, we, you know, we did terrorise them, I guess. But hey, we didn't mean to.
38:47You don't really want to hurt them. It was all very self-serving.
39:03So they were doing what they could to minimise the impact of their actions in the hope that,
39:10you know, that they'd get a more lenient sentence when they were eventually dealt with by the court.
39:32Judge Maguire described the case as one of the most serious of its kind and sentenced each man
39:42to 20 years jail on each count of armed robbery. But he said because of mitigating circumstances,
39:47the cooperation with police and voluntary disclosures about some of the robberies,
39:51that he would be recommending to the parole board that each man
39:54be released after serving seven and a half years of the sentence.
39:59Seven and a half years is actually a pretty decent sort of sentence for two blokes who had,
40:06in very violent circumstances, knocked off $3.2 million. It's a lot of money.
40:15Queensland Attorney General actually appealed that decision. The matter went before the Supreme Court,
40:21which resulted in the appeal being dismissed.
40:30Before we charged Bill Orchard with all these armed robberies,
40:33I asked him a simple question. Why did you do it?
40:37I think his quote was, we didn't have any financial encumbrances that made us do it.
40:44We were just sick of living an ordinary life. And he wanted to have some of the better things
40:48in life. If he wanted to have the canal front house, the sports car.
40:54And the only outlet for that was to start terrorising people and committing armed robberies.
41:01And sadly, most of the money was wasted on gambling.
41:09It doesn't take long when you're a poor gambler to chew through the money.
41:13They fly to Sydney just to go to the races,
41:18bet $40,000 on a single race, as Gary Sullivan would admit he did.
41:23In fact, his nickname in racing circles was Mr Cash, because he liked to bet
41:28in cash. He liked to buy boats and cars in cash.
41:34It was a different time, I suppose. And when we think about money laundering these days,
41:38I mean, they certainly were money laundering to bookies, but they were so terrible as gamblers
41:43that the money didn't come back washed. It just ended up in the bookies' bags.
41:52Bramble Security has moved to recoup some of its losses by selling the men's homes.
41:58Two houses, block of land, the boat, a couple of cars and a couple of racehorses.
42:05They probably recovered, I think, in total about $700,000 or $800,000,
42:10but a long way short of what they lost, obviously.
42:13And that left their families worse than when they started.
42:18Their families, their wives and children,
42:22left basically destitute, living on Social Security while the husbands were in jail.
42:27Well, presumably now Bill Orchard would be deceased. Otherwise, he'd be well into his 80s.
42:34But there are no indications of where he'd moved on from after his prison sentence.
42:40And the same almost is the case for Gary Sullivan.
42:47In Queensland, Sullivan shuffled around a number of jails.
42:50He ended up in a place called the Rowan, which is near Ipswich.
42:53So Sullivan earned the respect of his fellow prisoners.
42:56In 1999, he even captained the over-50s rugby league team
43:01in the Borallon Jail Cup against the Youngbloods.
43:04Unfortunately, the Youngbloods won.
43:08At some point, he escaped from jail and ended up in Adelaide,
43:11where he was later recaptured.
43:13But he's kept a very low profile in the years since he has been released.
43:20Rugby league is a very forgiving sport.
43:22And I have no doubt that the welcome mat would be put out for Sullivan if he chose to come back.
43:27At the time of speaking, though, he's resisted any temptations
43:31to come back to the kangaroo reunions.
43:36Why does this case stick with you?
43:38I think because of the uniqueness of it, the fact they had no criminal history,
43:43that they had survived for so long, committed so many major offences,
43:48and really had left no clues, apart from the photograph.
43:53His luck eventually ran out with the photograph.
43:57Our luck came in at the timing of going to that brokerage three weeks after he'd been there.
44:03That was sort of where the gods smiled on us.
44:06And things happen for a reason.
44:08And that was how it played out.
44:12The fact that I got the opportunity to work on it,
44:14the fact that I got the opportunity to work on it,
44:17I was very satisfied, particularly someone with my background,
44:21having been an armed robbery victim a long time ago.
44:26Getting people like this gives you an inordinate amount of job satisfaction,
44:29because you realise the impact of what they're doing, even if they don't.
44:45After I eventually left the police, after my 39-year career,
44:50I was appointed the Queensland Racing Integrity Commissioner.
44:54One of the first official functions I had was to meet the Queensland Bookmakers Association.
45:00And one of the bookmakers came up to me, and the very first thing he said to me was,
45:05please don't tell me you were in any way involved with the arrest of those two guys
45:10on the Gold Coast.
45:11He said, because we cried for weeks after they were arrested.
45:15We took so much money off them.
45:18We were devastated when they were arrested.
45:20They were our greatest customers.
45:22I had to break the news to him that, yeah, actually,
45:25I did have something to do with their arrest.
45:26So it was just the full circle, really, about the whole show.
Comments