Underbelly (34 page)

‘That's the dog's one and only bet,' said the boss. ‘The dog's barred.'

Which is how that dog became the only one in the world ever to be barred from playing two-up.

BEING jailed for contempt made no difference to Bruce Galea's relationships with close friends. A steady stream of mates and associates visited regularly, including former New South Wales Sports Minister Cleary. He and Galea shared a lifelong friendship after meeting as schoolboys at Waverley College, Coogee.

Galea never speaks of his time in jail but it's known to have been incident-free because of his friendship with a couple of heavies he knew well from the gambling world. They made sure he was not a target.

‘Bruce didn't get any favours from anyone while he was inside, just what he was entitled to,' a friend says. ‘But he had a job in the jail post office and I think he had some sort of respect from the guards because he was doing his time quietly and had never given anyone up.'

Nudging 70 at the time of writing, Galea lives quietly in Sydney's eastern suburbs.

It was ironic that he had spent more time in jail than police who trafficked drugs, took bribes, stole money, assaulted the public and ‘fitted up' suspects with crimes they didn't commit.

The public perception of gambling was that it was a traditional pastime and far less dangerous and socially
destructive than drug dealing and the foulness of prostitution and pornography.

The man who had informed on Galea, Detective Sergeant Swan, had rolled over after first denying he was corrupt. He recanted to take advantage of an amnesty from prosecution and told the truth.

Swan said most of the consorting squad were corrupt and accepted shares of the money handed out by Galea. He said the police did virtually nothing for their money except that their presence in illegal gambling rooms was a deterrent for criminals hoping to intimidate winners and steal their money.

The only other witness at the hearings sent to jail for contempt was a former policeman named Charlie Staunton who was sacked from the service and became a private investigator with many friends who were still serving officers.

Staunton refused to answer seventeen questions including inquiries about his relationship with self-confessed corrupt officer Trevor Haken and his dealings with other police. Other witnesses described him as a right-hand man to Kings Cross drug peddler Billy Bayeh but refused to elaborate on their relationship.

Staunton cut an impressive figure but that did not help get his tongue moving. He gave selective testimony but shied away from the question of who was responsible for three forged letters of reference given to a judge who had then cut down the usual jail sentence to only 300 hours of community service for Bayeh.

‘I take it that you would disagree with the suggestion
that (at least one of the documents was prepared by you,)' asked Commissioner Wood.

‘Yes,' said Staunton.

He served nine months in jail before agreeing to talk to the Royal Commission and then only because the Commission went public to say Bayeh had secretly rolled over months earlier.

Staunton conceded that in his 30-month employment with Bayeh he had engaged in corrupt activities with New South Wales police officers, specifically acting as the middle man in payments between Bayeh and Haken that he knew would be passed on to other corrupt police.

As a finale the Commission played a tape of Staunton saying to Haken that the rumoured Royal Commission held no fears for him because being jailed would add to his status and boost the sales of his intended book and film rights.

‘Wood can say “You're in contempt,” he skited.

‘I'll say “mate, fuckin' beauty … because I'll get a million dollars for the book.” I'll get two million for the fuckin' movie.'

The best laid plans …

–
WITH RAY CHESTERTON

Police are used to young people going ‘missing' and turning up within hours or days. The trouble is, of course, that a thousand happy endings for those never really missing hide the few who are.

 

NO ONE knew Revelle Balmain was missing, let alone dead, until she didn't turn up at Newcastle that Sunday morning.

Her mother had gone to the railway station to pick her up from the 11am train as they'd arranged but Revelle wasn't on it. Jan Balmain immediately felt uneasy. Beauty of Revelle's sort attracts attention, not all of it good. And it wasn't like her daughter simply to not turn up. She was conscientious about family things.

At 22, Revelle was a striking girl, with a dancer's lithe figure combined with impeccable cheek bones and feline eyes. To look at, she could have been an actor or a pop star – or a Russian tennis pin-up of the sort admired for her face and figure as well as her forehand. Unlike Kim Hollingsworth, the policeman's daughter she'd met around the modelling and club scene, Revelle hadn't dabbled in cosmetic surgery.

As a model she had just been photographed for the cover of an edgy magazine called
Oyster
; as a dancer she had just signed a contract to perform in Japan for six months. She had trained in ballet as a teenager – including a scholarship year at boarding school in England – and had moved on to modern dance in the hope of breaking into showbiz. In this she was following her mother's own surefooted steps.

Jan, a country girl who had started Irish dancing as a child, had been a dancer on Channel Nine in the network's heyday as the home of variety and
Bandstand
. Now her showbusiness dreams were invested completely in her younger daughter.

But none of that mattered as the clock crawled past noon on Sunday 6 November 1994. All Jan Balmain knew was that Revelle had missed the train, that she wasn't on the next train either and that she didn't know why. It wasn't just a casual day trip: Revelle had specifically arranged to visit her parents for a farewell lunch; next day she was going to Brisbane to rehearse dance routines for two weeks before heading on the Japan tour.

Jan went home and called anyone she could think of who might know Revelle's movements, including her older daughter Suellen. No one knew anything. Then she called
all the hospitals in Sydney. By late afternoon she could feel the panic rising. She went to the local police station at Nelson Bay around 6pm and insisted that a reluctant constable file a Missing Persons report.

Police are used to young people going ‘missing' and turning up within hours or days, looking sheepish and ducking questions about a one-night stand, a party that got out of hand, a spontaneous trip to the beach or even just a forgotten appointment. The trouble is, of course, that a thousand happy endings for those who were never really missing hide the few who are.

This is the inbuilt advantage a random killer has: if nothing suspicious is witnessed, then the absence of a young adult is not taken seriously by the authorities for days. And, as any homicide detective can tell you, it means that in a handful of sinister cases, the 24-hour ‘golden' period for an investigator is lost.

In those precious hours and days, the crime scene is destroyed or compromised, witnesses evaporate and their memories fade. Even relevant security footage can be lost. No one can tell which case is going to have a bad ending – but a mother's instincts run high. In this case, Jan Balmain insisted that the Missing Persons report be forwarded to Sydney. She was right.

Next day, Monday, a policeman called Grahame Mulherin called her from Rose Bay police station in Sydney, his first day there after transferring from the South Coast. What the family did not know then – but has been haunted by since – is that some of Revelle's personal property, apparently scattered from her handbag, had already been handed in to police on the previous day, Sunday.

A resident had found Revelle's gear scattered in Ainslie Street, Kingsford on Sunday and had done the right thing, turning it in to Maroubra police. A Constable Alderman handed the gear – a cork-heeled platform shoe, cane makeup bag, diary and keys – to Mulherin, along with some interesting information.

For the police, the fact Revelle's property had been scattered around Kingsford would soon take on some significance. But at first sight it might have seemed that the gear had been tossed away by a handbag thief. Not that any swifter action could have helped Revelle – but it might have led to her killer in time to make a case. Instead, the trail went cold.

What Constable Alderman had uncovered – and told Mulherin – was background about the missing girl that would shock her worried parents. Background that provided the best clue as to what had happened because it pinpointed the last person to see her alive.

Unbeknown to Jan and Revelle's father, Ivor Balmain, Revelle had taken up working for two escort agencies. In a story as old as showbusiness, the girl waiting for her big break was cashing in on her best asset, her looks, to bankroll her tilt at the glittering life that hung just out of reach.

There are always people on the shady side of the showbiz street waiting to exploit the girls (or boys) who choose the fake and desperate ‘glamour' of escort work instead of facing the grind of lowly-paid jobs that would reveal the failure of their dreams. It is a way to make fast money to subsidise fast lifestyles. But it's a dangerous bargain, for all the justifications made for it.

What the efficient Constable Alderman had found out from Revelle's flatmate Geoff Spears (and relayed to Mulherin) was that Revelle not only worked for a model agency run by a Kathryn Margaret Hazel-Dawson (known as Lilli) but she worked under an alias for an escort agency called Select Companions, owned by Zoran and Jane Stanojevic. She had also worked for another agency, VIP, under a different alias.

On Monday 7 November, the investigation went off course. It was nobody's fault, really – more a case of misplaced confidence in an honest mistake. An acquaintance of Revelle's, a model called Sonya Lynch, assured the police that Revelle had called Lilli's apartment on Sunday morning and that she (Sonya) had answered the telephone and spoken to her.

Lynch admitted she had been half asleep at the time but insisted that she knew Revelle's voice well and that she was positive it was Revelle on the line. She was not the first witness to get a simple thing terribly wrong.

Faced with this ‘evidence', Mulherin was understandably reluctant to assume the worst: that is, that Revelle had been murdered or was even a genuine missing person. The Balmains, and Revelle's older sister Suellen Simpson, were sick with fear but willing to grasp at the hope the supposed Sunday morning telephone call offered. It didn't last. The silence was too much. Every passing hour made it more sinister.

Later that Monday, Mulherin and a detective called Mick Gerondis spoke to local residents who had found Revelle's belongings in Kingsford. Meanwhile, there were
other developments in that suburb. The police soon established that Revelle's last known movements were to meet an escort client at his house in McNair Avenue, Kingsford, on Saturday afternoon. The client's name was Gavin Owen Samer, and the police asked the escort agency to tell him to get in touch with them, which he did.

Mulherin asked Samer to come to Maroubra Police Station, which he did at 5.20pm on Monday, accompanied by his then girlfriend Michelle Oswald-Sealy. Samer, then aged 25, wore a zip-necked shirt, partially open. Mulherin noticed scratch marks on his neck, under his jaw and below his ear, and was curious about how he had got them. Asked about these, Samer said he didn't know, and his friend Michelle didn't know either. This wasn't surprising, as she had been away all weekend in Brisbane without Samer, who had celebrated his Saturday night home alone by pawning her clarinet for $250 to treat himself to some paid sex. He had called the Select escort agency and as bad luck had it, Revelle Balmain had taken the job.

The receptionist at Select, Lisa Mancini, knew Revelle had arrived at Samer's house at 3.50pm because, as part of the agency routine, Revelle had called in to say so. Around 6pm Revelle rang in again to say she was leaving Samer's house – but in fact she must have stayed until at least 7.15pm, when she called her friend Kate. The extra time she spent with Samer would suggest she had been offered extra money she didn't want to share with the agency. The call to Kate was the last time anyone had heard from her.

All of this made the police interested in Samer's demeanour, his alibi – and the scratches on his skin. Mulherin
asked Samer to take off his shirt. There were more scratch marks on his ribs. He told the sceptical Mulherin he must have got them surfing. When Mulherin asked him about what appeared to be bite marks on his fingers, Samer said he'd hurt them surfing, too, or maybe cut them on string at work. Mulherin wasn't convinced and arranged to have forensic photographs taken of the scratches.

Mulherin had a look at Samer's car but did not find anything suspicious. It had been, of course, 48 hours since Revelle had been heard of, which was plenty of time for potential evidence to disappear. Mulherin took Samer back to his house to see the chequebook that Samer said he'd used to pay the girl. But when they got to the house Samer could not find the chequebook. He could not explain why it had disappeared. The garbage had already been emptied that Monday morning, which meant potential evidence might have been lost. It was becoming clear the investigation was a day behind – and a day is a long time in a suspected homicide. Which, by next day, it was.

Asked his version of events, Samer insisted that he had paid Revelle the agreed amount, plus a tip for staying extra time. Then, he said, he had driven her to a local pub, the Red Tomato Inn. He said that after she had gone into the hotel, he had gone into the bottle shop and bought some Strongbow cider and cigarettes.

Mulherin went to the Red Tomato Inn and showed a photograph of the missing girl to the manager, a Michael Eivers, who said something like: ‘Have a look at the people that get in this place – if a girl like that walked in here, the whole joint would stop.' She had not been there, he said.
No member of staff or patron could recall seeing her. And no one could remember a man matching Samer's description buying Strongbow cider and cigarettes – a point that would be proven in the Coroners Court four years later when the bottle shop attendant went through every transaction on the cash register roll for that Saturday night. No one had bought Strongbow cider and cigarettes that night, which meant Samer was lying or suffering delusions.