Gangland Robbers (10 page)

At their trial for McGrath's murder, Jackson ran the unpromising defence that he had shot at the constable to save his own life. Buckley, in a statement to the jury, said that he tried to find an opening at the back of the hall on the top floor. He could not do so, and came back. He rushed past McGrath and did not fire a shot until he was out of the passage. He fired in the air, and not to shoot any of the constables. Ward in
his statement claimed he did not know why he took the revolver with him, but that it was certainly not to kill anyone. He was outside the building and knew nothing about the shooting; he had never fired a shot. After retiring for nearly six hours, the jury foreman told the judge that they had agreed on a verdict in the case of one man, but had not been able to agree in the case of the other two and there was no chance of their agreeing. His Honour then said that he would take the verdict arrived at.

 

The Foreman: We find John Jackson guilty.

 

Before passing the death sentence, the judge told Jackson there was no hope that he could look to. The final decision did not rest with him, but he urged Jackson to make the best of his time on earth. Ward and Buckley were remanded for a retrial. Jackson appealed.

Meanwhile, on 29 November the Crown had asked for a special jury, an application that Mr Justice Hood granted. It did them no good. On 13 December the jury again disagreed. The general opinion has always been that this was due to Taylor's interference. However, in his summing up Mr Justice Hodges did leave open the possibility of a not guilty verdict. He told the jury that if the accused did not fire a shot but authorised the firing, they were equal participants with Jackson. If they had been determined to shoot, if necessary, they were equally guilty. If the jury felt that there was such a plan but that one had abandoned it, he should be given the benefit of the doubt. If the jury thought their intention was simply to frighten, then they were not guilty.

Finally, at the third trial, bargains had been struck. No evidence was offered on the murder charge, and Ward and Buckley pleaded guilty to committing a felony, for which they received five and six years' hard labour respectively. Given their records, these were remarkably lenient sentences that more than wiped out Buckley's wrongful whipping. After his release, he became a Taylor stalwart.

When Jackson's appeal came before the State Full Court on 17 December, it was clear from the outset it was going nowhere. His counsel, Mr McFarlane, argued that when Jackson came face to face with McGrath, the officer had shot him through the leg and that as he was about to shoot him again, Jackson had aimed at the officer's hand or arm but had instead fatally shot him.

 

Chief Justice: His business was to surrender.

 

McFarlane went on to argue that McGrath had no right to fire the second shot.

 

Chief Justice: If he could not otherwise arrest him he had the right to shoot.

 

There was never going to be a reprieve. Sonenberg offered to put £100 of his own money into trying to take things to the Privy Council but Jackson asked him to give it to his wife instead. He was hanged at the Melbourne Gaol, less than two hundred yards from the Trades Hall. James Cosgrove, serving ten years commuted from the death penalty for a 1909 rape, acted as executioner, so receiving a partial remission of his sentence.

There may have been doubt about Taylor's involvement in the Trades Hall robbery but there is no doubt that on 29 February 1916, he and another of his gang, John Williamson, hired a taxi driver, William Patrick Haines (who worked for the Globe Motor and Taxi Company at Camberwell and Essendon, and was the grandson of the first prem ier of Victoria, William Clark) for a drive in the country. With them, they took false number plates, suitcases, and wore glasses as a disguise. The intention was to rob a bank employee who was taking money from Doncaster to Templestowe Bank, which had a branch in Bulleen. Haines apparently would not go along with their plan and was shot. At about 11.45 that morning, his body, covered with a blanket, was found inside the cab. Nearby was a partly dug grave and at a waterhole, false moustaches, dungarees, spirit gum and the glasses.
Three witnesses who had seen
the pair with Haines gave detailed descriptions.

Within days, Taylor and Williamson were arrested at Flemington racecourse, on holding charges of ‘being without means'. Now witnesses came forward to make positive identifications, and it was a small step to a charge of murder.

The prosecution particularly relied on the fact that the taxi was hired to collect a man, named L'Estrange from Cliveden Mansions. There was no L'Estrange at the flats, but opposite Taylor's home was a shingle for a well-known solicitor, L'Estrange. Taylor had refused to answer the police questions and there was now what might be described as a rather poor attempt at verballing. The police matron said she had
heard Taylor say to Williamson, ‘They cannot very well pot us if they do not identify us'.

Taylor set about putting together an alibi and also having the prosecution witnesses spoken to. The man for that was another offsider, Henry Stokes, who went to see Taylor in the Melbourne Gaol. Would Stokes say he had seen him at around 11 a.m. the day Haines was shot? Of course he would, and he would do better than that, he would find some more witnesses. One of them was a barmaid, Alice Bell, who was prepared to say she had been with Taylor the night before. Then there was a barber who said Taylor had come over to his shop in his pyjamas to be shaved. When questioned, Williamson had told the police that he had slept at the place where he lived, and that he did not get up until nine o'clock when he then had a conversation with the woman of the house.

At the trial in April, Mr Justice Hood dealt fairly with the so-called verbal, saying of the ‘pot us' comment, ‘[It] is either a perfectly innocent remark or an admission of guilt. It might be said by an innocent man.' Regarding the witnesses, he was less happy:

 

The prisoners and their witnesses are all people of a very inferior type. One is living in adultery. They are mixed up with pony racing, a thing defined in this court as being attended by thieves, spielers and fools where fools think they might make money.

 

He then added:

 

If the defence is right it kills the Crown case; if it is willfully untrue then the only conclusion can be that the prisoners are guilty and these witnesses have come to court to commit perjury. If you are satisfied of the prisoners' guilt you should say so. If not you should equally say so. If you believe the story for the defence it is extremely strong. It is for you to decide.

 

The jury decided they were not guilty.

Angus Murray, born Henry James Donnelly in Adelaide in 1882, joined Taylor's gang shortly after the Haines murder acquittal. By the time he was twenty-one, not only had he burgled the home of the chief justice, Sir Samuel Way, he had also robbed Government House. At that point, he was sentenced to seven years' hard labour for a series of robberies.

He escaped from the fearsome Yatala Stockade Prison and was not recaptured for a year. However, his success as an escapee was not a reflection of his intelligence, for, after a number of successful burglaries, he wrote to the newspapers with details of how he had executed the jobs, which led to a further sentence. While in prison in Fremantle, he met up with a Robert David Bennett, who was serving a sentence for the rape of a young girl whom he had infected with venereal disease. Most men in prison can make a good case for their innocence and Bennett convinced Murray of his. Murray, on his own release, paid to have Bennett's claim investigated, and also left money with the Salvation Army to pay his fare to Melbourne, where in 1916 he had teamed up with Taylor.

On 18 September the next year, Murray, Bennett and Taylor robbed the Middle Park branch of the ES&A Bank. Murray was to enter the bank, while Taylor was the observer and organiser. In theory, it was to be an easy raid.

The bank teller was the only person on the premises and Murray, wearing a large pair of motorcycle goggles as a disguise, ordered him to lie on the floor. He bound and gagged him, and was rifling through the safe when a messenger from another bank arrived. The messenger knocked and, getting no reply, looked through the letterbox. He then ran off to find a telephone to call the police. Taylor had left a horse and cart at the rear of the bank to take Murray to a waiting car that Bennett was driving. The next day, the car was found abandoned in Albury, and the police caught Murray and Bennett in the local post office, where Murray was in the process of posting £480 to Sydney. Naturally, Taylor was never charged.

The trial judge said he regretted he was unable to declare the men habitual criminals, as their previous offences had not been dealt with by the Victorian courts, but he was able to achieve the same end by ordering their detention in a reformatory. The sentence would be fifteen years' hard labour, with subsequent detention in a reformatory at the governor's pleasure. He hoped it would be many years before they were at liberty, as surely no government would be so foolish as to let them out, as the Western Australian government had done with Bennett.

Bennett served most of his term but Murray's confidence in him was sadly misplaced. After his release, Bennett was hanged on 27 September 1932 for the rape of a 4-year-old girl he had lured into a disused house. The last person allowed to make a speech from the
Victorian gallows, Bennett spoke for nine minutes. Meanwhile, Murray had had additional troubles of his own.

In the winter of 1923 Taylor decided it was time for the release of his old friend Angus Murray, then in Geelong Gaol. He set about planning his escape and on 24 August, Murray made his break. A rope with a hook, as well as a fretsaw and some money, had been smuggled into the prison, and Murray cut through the bars of his cell and hooked the rope to the outside wall.
As he scaled it, he touched an alarm
wire. Nevertheless, he managed to get away and, as the
Victoria Police Gazette
reported, was then, carrying a travelling rug and a small brown case, on his way to a safe house. The police thought he would return to Melbourne and roadblocks were set up, but instead he remained at Geelong for a week before he was driven to the city.

Although Taylor lived for a number of years after it, the robbery of the manager of the Commercial Bank in Glenferrie six weeks later marked the beginning of the end of his career. Murray had been at large for less than two months when, on 8 October, he and the lame Richard Buckley robbed Thomas Berriman as he followed his usual Monday routine of taking a bag of notes to the Glenferrie railway station, to catch the 11.13 to Melbourne. The previous May, two bank clerks had been peppered and threatened with a pistol in Spencer Street, and thieves had made off with £2750. Now Berriman carried a gun.

Taylor's plan was simple. Berriman would be attacked as he walked to the platform. The bag, together with any gun he was carrying, would be snatched, and Murray and Buckley would jump into the waiting car.
The driver was to be Taylor
but, when it came to it, our hero preferred to skulk outside the police headquarters in Russell Street, so setting up a cast-iron alibi. Buckley, now sixty years old, was still on parole from the Trades Hall sentence. As Berriman came down the ramp, Buckley asked him if he could carry his bag, which contained more than £1850, and Berriman replied, ‘No thank you, old man, I can carry it myself.'

When Buckley then tried to take his bag from him, the brave, if foolish, Berriman refused to hand it over and was promptly shot. Murray, wearing a grey suit and a yellow fedora, helped Buckley as he limped along to the getaway car, from time to time turning and waving his revolver at pursuers.

Two days after the robbery, two women telephoned the police to say they had seen two men burning a briefcase in a yard at 443 Barkly Street,
St Kilda. In the early hours of 11 October, the police broke through the doors of the five-roomed detached cottage. When they called out, ‘Hands up,' Murray replied, ‘They are up.' Taylor was in bed with his girlfriend, Ida Pender, but of Buckley there was no trace. It was thought that he had been staying with Taylor, but that night he had been out ‘tomcatting', and on his return, seeing the police, he disappeared.

Berriman had been taken to a private hospital, where he died at 8.45 a.m. on 21 October 1923. The surgeon had not been able to locate the bullet to remove it. As he lay in bed, he positively identified Buckley as the gunman from a photograph and Murray as being with him. The coroner returned a verdict of wilful murder against both and, perhaps somewhat speculatively, a charge of accessory before the fact for Taylor. The trial was scheduled for November but Murray wanted an adjournment to February, with which the police were happy because they thought it would give them more time to find Buckley.

On 11 November Taylor was granted bail with two sureties of £500 and went to live at the Queensland Hotel, Bourke Street. He did at least have the courtesy to try to assist his former employee. Almost immediately after his arrest, he had attempted to have Murray rescued from prison and now, out and about himself, he tried again, on 31 January 1924. This time, a warder, who they had planned to bribe with an offer of £250 and a £7 a week pension if he should be dismissed, told the police of the approach. In turn, they seized a car outside the prison, arrested the four men in it, including Taylor's brother Thomas, and confiscated a rope ladder. There were, in any case, suggestions that Taylor was not being wholly altruistic in his efforts to free Murray—it was thought he might crack and divulge details of the Melbourne underworld.
Truth
, for one, thought it was
rather fortunate for Murray that the escape attempt had failed.

The trial was a foregone conclusion. The prosecution alleged that the information about how easy it was to rob the bank came from a former employee who had met Murray in prison and, although Murray denied it, there is no doubt it counted against him. After retiring for an hour and a half, the jury returned a verdict of murder, and Murray was sentenced to death on 22 February 1924. His appeal was heard before the full court on 6 March, with the trial judge, Mr Justice Mann, sitting as one of the judges. ‘When Death's Wings Fluttered Over Gloom of Criminal Court', headlined the
Truth
when it had previewed the trial.
Now the wings flapped
furiously. Meanwhile the evidence—as opposed to suspicion—against Taylor was very thin indeed and really relied on the fact the pair had stayed in his home.
On 3 March the charge against him
of being an accessory was withdrawn.