Gangland Robbers (18 page)

In late 1969 Woon began to research what would become the biggest robbery in Sydney to that time. Along with Frank ‘Baldy' Blair (who had worked worldwide as a shoplifter, and was both a former member of the Kangaroos—the loose-knit association of Australian shoplifters and pickpockets who were the scourge of Europe in the 1960s and early 1970s—and a Painter and Docker), he planned the robbery of a Mayne Nickless security van.
The team included another Painter and Docker
, one-time boxer Stephen Nittes of Gorokan on the Central Coast, and a fourth man, Alan Laurie Albert Jones.

Woon had found an inside man who told them that, almost unbelievably, the security guards regularly parked the van in the Guildford shopping centre while they ate their lunch before making their delivery to the Commonwealth Bank. The raid itself was simple. Shortly before noon on 4 March 1970 one of the security guards, John Moon, opened the van door to put out the rubbish. In came the masked robbers and out went $587 890.

In the underworld, there have always been ‘thieves' ponces', those who are perhaps not skilled enough to do the work themselves but prey on those who are. In the 1920s Snowy Cutmore and his Safe Protection Gang were a good example, but the Australian team
par excellence
was the Sydney-based Toecutters Gang, who snipped off other crims' toes to persuade them to hand over proceeds from robberies.

It was never quite clear who was in the Toecutters. It has been suggested the leader was one-time seaman Kevin Gore, who had been given the so-called green light by corrupt New South Wales police officer Fred Krahe to carry out burglaries, the proceeds of which were shared with him. There is, however, reason to believe Krahe was the actual leader of the Toecutters, or at least a participating member.

The fearsome James Linus ‘The Pom' Driscoll, who later sided with Billy Longley in the Painters and Dockers wars of the early 1970s, was said to have been another. Born in 1937 in London's East End, he may
have been a childhood friend of the Kray twins, who ruled the area from the late 1950s through the 1960s, but there is no evidence he was ever part of their so-called ‘Firm'. English contemporaries maintain they have never heard of him. Nor is there anything to back up the stories that he worked for the IRA or Congo mercenary ‘Mad Mike' Hoare; let alone that he once removed a man's eyeballs with a teaspoon.

His account of his early life was much more boring. Although young Driscoll was bright enough, his father did not have enough money to send him to a smart school in North London. In 1954 Driscoll was sent to Borstal—in all senses of the word, an English training establishment for young criminals—for three years after robbing a shopkeeper. Upon arriving in New South Wales, he helped his then girlfriend run a dress shop in Double Bay.

Driscoll's criminal record spanned twenty-four years, ending in 1978, when he received two years and three months for possessing a machine pistol.
By then, he had been involved
in a murder case that changed the law.

After the Mayne Nickless robbery, the Toecutters first attacked Stephen Nittes, who gave up $20 000 to save his digits and probably his life. Next was ‘Baldy' Blair, who was allegedly tortured in the cellar of the Iron Duke in Botany Road, Alexandria. His toes were cut and testicles torched to persuade him to reveal where he had deposited his $90 000 share. He died from his injuries and his body was thrown into Sydney Harbour in the belief it would be eaten by sharks. It instead washed up in Botany Bay. Blair had not disclosed where he had hidden his money, but when the Toecutters visited his girlfriend, she was only too happy to hand over his share.
According to robber Neddy Smith
, an attempt to kidnap Alan Jones at the Coogee Bay Hotel failed.

Woon had already left the country, taking with him more than his fair share of the proceeds, and was thought to be in England, where he was sought by the police and by other criminals. Nittes was arrested on 23 September at the Randwick House Motor Inn. He would, he told the police, have been gone in another couple of hours. In the intervening months, he had bought a property in Leichhardt Street, Gorokan; a Valiant station wagon; a skiff and, very sensibly, some rifles. At trial, Jones and Nittes received sixteen years apiece. Melbourne's Billy ‘The Texan' Longley—because of his hat and the Colt gun he carried—and Painters and Dockers Union federal president ‘Big' Jim Donnegan
were charged with receiving $6500, part of the proceeds of the robbery. Donnegan died before the trial, but on 1 May 1972 Longley was found guilty and sentenced to three years with eighteen months to be served. Later, he would say there was a contract on his life, and had he been acquitted he would have been killed by two men sitting in the court, one of whom had a hand grenade. Longley served fifteen months before being released in August 1973.

On 21 February 1975, after the jury had retired for less than an hour, Linus Driscoll was convicted of murdering fellow Toecutter Jake Maloney in what the prosecution claimed was the wash-up of the Mayne Nickless robbery. It was alleged that Driscoll had shot Maloney through a bathroom window in Revesby on 24 November 1972. At the time, Driscoll was going out with a Pauline Bradley, and Maloney was going out with her sister. Maloney and Driscoll had been sharing a flat, and the prosecution alleged Driscoll killed his one-time friend because Maloney had planted a bomb in his car.

There was another perfectly good suspect, Phillip Moore, who had also been the victim of a suspected bomb attack by Maloney. But after Maloney's killing, Driscoll had immediately left for Melbourne, and when he was arrested a year later, was found to have a machine pistol, as well as a sawn-off shotgun and an automatic pistol. He said he felt safer with them.

The High Court quashed Driscoll's murder conviction on 10 August 1977, ruling the judge had erred in admitting into evidence unsigned statements to the police. This was the time that the Australian courts began to recognise seriously that defendants might have been verballed.
A retrial was ordered
, and on 29 November Driscoll was acquitted. After serving his two-year sentence for the machine pistol, he was deported to England.

According to the underworld, Maloney was killed by yet another fellow Toecutter, the psychopathic John Stewart Regan, ‘Nano the Magician', on 23 November 1971. According to legend, just before Maloney was killed, Regan, referring to Baldy Blair's floating body, said, ‘Sharks; hey, Jake, I'll give you bloody sharks, you idiot.'

Woon never resurfaced after the Mayne Nickless robbery. It is thought he went to Europe, possibly to England. His legacy is in the Supreme Court case
Woon v R
which, it has been subsequently and persuasively argued, was bad law when his selective answers in the ES&A case were wrongly admitted in evidence.

Unlike with Woon's gang, it was never quite clear who was the leader of the Magnetic Drill Gang, or, indeed, who were its members during the two or so years in which a series of meticulously planned and executed safebreakings were carried out in Victoria and New South Wales during the late 1970s. The gang's early raids included a break-in at the mid-city American Express office in Melbourne on 29 March 1978, which netted around $250 000, and a 20 August attack on gem merchant John Morris's Lonsdale Street office, which was said to have produced a similar amount. There were also successful raids on night safes in banks in Camberwell, Gardenvale, Elsternwick, Hawthorn and Toorak.

The raids were clearly the work of the same team. Two specialised pieces of equipment were used. The first was a circular electro-magnet that was clamped on the side of the safe, holding in place a diamond-tipped drill used to make a hole just above the tumblers of the lock. The second piece, a medical cystoscope, allowed the boxmen to look through the drilled hole. There was also a special attachment that enabled the operator to move the tumblers and open the safe. The safes themselves were all Chubbs, and the police believed the team had perfected their technique by working on a Chubb safe they had stolen in Melbourne.

There was the occasional failure. On 17 September 1978 they did not succeed in opening the Murrumbeena ANZ Bank's safe. However, their final touch in Melbourne seems to have been the theft of $25 000 worth of diamonds from DG Buchanan's in Chapel Street, Windsor, on the weekend of 18–19 November. Again, the gang cut through the ceiling of the floor above the shop and used their precision drilling equipment to open the safe.
Buchanan said they stole only
the most valuable watches and jewellery.

Three days later, the gang traveled to Murwillumbah, near the border of Queensland and New South Wales, until then best known for hosting the Tweed Valley Banana Festival and for a visit by Prince Charles the previous year. They hit the big time, netting $1.7 million, then Australia's biggest robbery. A security company had delivered the cash to the Bank of New South Wales on Wednesday afternoon, for overnight deposit. It had been due to be delivered to the Reserve Bank in Brisbane on Thursday.

There were now suggestions the gang could even be flying overseas in their own plane with the loot. It was estimated that their total haul, including Murwillumbah, topped $2 500 000. Certainly, by early
December it was known that some of the money had found its way to Hong Kong.

With jobs such as this, the police would know the names of the handful of people capable of such work. It seems incredible that in those less enlightened days of policing no charges were ever brought and the almost inevitable conclusion is that the gang was paying protection.

Over the years, Graham ‘The Munster' Kinniburgh has repeatedly been suggested as the Magnetic Drill Gang's leader, with Leo Callaghan, also known as Jack ‘The Fibber' Warren, as his henchman. They had known each other since the days of the Kangaroos. Callaghan had started his criminal career in 1938, with a conviction for riding on the outside of a tramcar, but had progressed far from that modest beginning. He wore a grey toupee, had ‘No 1' tattooed on his penis and was ranked highly among crims. A virtual kleptomaniac who regarded anything highly coloured as his own, on one occasion Callaghan took a Sung dynasty emerald elephant from Asprey in London's Bond Street in addition to the diamond earrings the team had stolen, wrapping it in his coat as he left. No fence would cut it down, and so it was painted white and used as a doorstop in his flat in North West London. When he left the country, he left the elephant behind for the unsuspecting landlord.

Kinniburgh, a known and talented safebreaker, often worked with fellow Painter and Docker Les Kane as his minder to prevent unwanted interruptions. Known as The Munster because of his facial resemblance to the television character Herman Munster, over the decades the modest, influential and shadowy Kinniburgh rose to become a kingpin in Melbourne's crime scene. A man whose career spanned three decades, he was one of the relatively few mobsters who have bridged the gap between the underworld and respectability, and was well known for his discreet connections to Melbourne's establishment.

Born in a Richmond slum, Kinniburgh
was known in his early days for having a razor-sharp temper and the ability to back it up with his fists. Over the years, the lantern-jawed Kinniburgh was seen with barristers and solicitors around the law courts, and with owners and jockeys at Caulfield and other Melbourne tracks, where he was a genial and successful tipster, as well as privately regarded as a race fixer.

Although he claimed to be a simple rigger, he lived in Kew and was seen in fashionable restaurants such as Flower Drum. He was, said one Melbourne barrister who knew and socialised with him, ‘One of the
three top crims I ever met.' Said one friend, ‘Graham was a gentle gentleman, a beautiful quiet soul. I don't know why they had to kill him.' On one occasion, he rather diffidently told his barrister after a successful defence, ‘There's not much a feller like me can do for a feller like you but if you ever need a feller like me …' In 1994 when his son married into one of the city's established families, the wedding was held at St Peter's Anglican Church, East Melbourne, and the reception was at Melbourne institution the Hotel Windsor. A few months before his death, his barrister daughter, Suzie, married the son of a former attorney-general.

In the month before Kinniburgh died, he took to carrying a gun, which he had not done since his early days. Shortly before midnight on 13 December 2003, he was shot in the chest as he got out of his car outside his home, carrying a bag of groceries. It is thought he managed to get one shot off from his own gun. He had been at particular risk after the death of Melbourne identity Alphonse Gangitano, at whose home he had been on the night he was killed. It is believed Kinniburgh was killed on the orders of Melbourne gang leader Carl Williams, in reprisal for Gangitano's death.

Unkind people thought Kinniburgh's ability to talk to the police about many topics may have helped to keep him out of prison in the years before his death. The week before he was shot, he held a series of meetings in Carlton restaurants with the cream of the local villains. The day before his murder, he had been seen having coffee in Lygon Street with a detective from Carlton Criminal Investigation Branch.
Others would have none of it
, believing Kinniburgh, of all people, to be staunch.

It now seems that another armed robber may have killed Kinniburgh. Terrence Leigh Blewitt, who specialised in cash-in-transit robberies, disappeared on 12 April 2004. A friend had dropped him off in Melton, in Melbourne's western suburbs, around 2.20 p.m. He got into a green Hyundai saloon and was never seen alive again. It was not until January 2016 that his remains were discovered in Thomastown.

During his long and overall
none-too-successful career, Blewitt was sentenced in 1985 to a minimum of thirteen years for wounding Joseph Jirman, an Armaguard security guard, in a $253 000 robbery on 8 February that year at a Sydney shopping centre. Then, in 1994, he was part of a team that carried out a home invasion in which a young Coffs Harbour couple were terrorised in their home. The next year, his name was in the frame over the killing of security guard Robert
Jones, shot in a robbery outside the Westpac Bank in Miranda, Sydney. According to one of his colleagues on the raid, he had told the police of Jones's involvement as early as 2000 but claimed the police had not acted on this. In 1996 Blewitt was shot in the back by a guard during a bungled escape from an escort, en route to a Sydney hospital where he was to receive medical treatment. In 2000 Blewitt was jailed for a minimum of three years for conspiracy to commit an armed robbery, having been caught on telephone intercepts. He was released shortly before Kinniburgh was killed. He was then arrested for the armed robbery of a cash handler making a midnight deposit at a Mornington bank.