Who bombed the Hilton? (33 page)

Mmmm
, think the police. The University of New South Wales staff are not only meticulous with their records but they are pretty adamant that they don't
rent lockers without student ID. It doesn't have to be
their
university's student ID. Special Branch continue their investigations and reveal that ‘NAME blacked out' thought that perhaps the locker had been hired using a student card he had been issued when he attended Wollongong University.

So what is the fuss about? It's about the fact that on 28 August 1989, JJ Melton, aged 29, hangs himself. This is a few months after Anderson's arrest and Pederick's confessions and a few months before either of their trials. It is suggested by Anderson's defence that this suicide is not a coincidence and that Melton was allegedly worried (although there are no witness statements substantiating this) about being called to give evidence. The thing is poor JJ Melton was never called
as a witness for anything in the past (not the inquest in 1982, not the Section 475 inquiry in 1984–85). The Anderson defence omitted all mention of Melton's recorded 5 January 1982 police statement admitting previously being a drug addict and exchanging his student card for drugs in 1977. Nor did they mention that this indicated to police that whoever hired the locker had probably used a stolen identity card, which seems likely given that the locker contained other stolen student identification documents.

Look, I suppose it's possible that JJ Melton, who was on board the HMAS
Creswell
for the first six months of 1978, could have ended up in Sydney on his first shore leave and met a boy/girl who asked him to rent a locker in his (his dad's) name and he gave them the key before he got back on board for another long stint at sea. The thing is I doubt it.

Given that the physical contents of the locker seem to have at least a circumstantial link to the Hilton bombing, and that in early 1982 the New South Wales Government announces that there will be a coronial inquest into the deaths arising from the Hilton, New South Wales Special Branch are super keen to ‘give evidence at the Inquest linking the Ananda Marga with the explosives found at the University of New South Wales'.
⁹
Special Branch want to use the intelligence gathered in 1978–79 by the ASIO agent embedded in the Ananda Marga about storing gelignite in a locker
at Macquarie University. After some toing and froing ASIO refuses to allow this. First they argue they do not wish to compromise their still active agent, and second, such intelligence could be regarded as simply prejudicial hearsay and have no relevance to the inquest. ASIO's arguments seem reasonable, if maddening.

The inquest,
1982

So here we are in mid-1982 with the overdue Hilton bombing inquest about to begin and the discovery of a cache of gelignite and bomb paraphernalia that cannot be introduced into evidence. Whether this would have made a difference is anyone's guess, given that the inquest seems to be about everything but an investigation of the deaths of Alec Carter, William Favell and Paul Burmistriw who were blown apart by a bomb on 13 February 1978 outside the Hilton Hotel.

The coronial inquest is a chaotic circus combining the conspiracy allegations (ASIO et al planting the bomb), the miscarriage of justice allegations about Yagoona, and reams of material about Seary's unreliability as a witness. The transcripts are infused with anger, confusion and barbed asides from lawyers
representing Seary, injured policeman Terry Griffiths, Dunn, Alister and Anderson.

It is only when one comes across Detective Inspector Norm Sheather's eloquent statement prepared for the inquest that the hysteria and shouting recedes and he returns us to the scene of the crime and the anguish of that night.

Sheather may have moved a long way (possibly down) from being at the head of Australia's largest homicide investigation to being the Detective Inspector of North-Eastern Police in 1979 and, in 1982, the Detective Inspector for Country Districts, but he is clear-eyed in his recollections and unflinching in accepting responsibility. Beat by bloody beat he takes the listener through the carnage he witnessed on arriving at the scene (‘identification of the man FAVELL was only possible by the fingerprint of one finger-tip').
¹
Sheather tells of his team of 58 expert detectives and of the thousands of interviews conducted over the six months he was in charge, and underlines that ‘extensive investigations were carried out in all states of Australia and a number of overseas countries'. Despite all these monumental efforts, however, he admits ‘no information was obtained which would be sufficient to identify the person or persons involved in causing the deaths of the three persons mentioned'.
²

What he does not mention is the effect Seary's recruitment by Special Branch and the subsequent
Yagoona arrests on 15 June had upon his investigation. Instead he makes a mournful statement that ‘there was extensive media coverage of this horrific incident and information was supplied to police concerning many possible suspects for this crime. All these avenues were thoroughly investigated, without success.'
³

Sheather finishes with a kind of liturgy for the dead. He invokes the last minutes of each of the victims, carefully recounting the moments before their lives intersected with the bomb.

William Ebb, the garbage truck driver, saw ‘Favell pick up the bin … he then turned his head and heard a deafening explosion. He saw a sheet of flame and glass shattering on both sides of the street.' As John Watson, another garbageman, passes Favell about to lift the bin outside the Hilton, en route to collect the one next to it, ‘he heard the loud explosion and felt the blast that made him stumble'. Sergeant Arthur Hawtin was talking to Constable Burmistriw, ‘when there was a blinding flash'; Senior Constable Terry Griffiths, ‘looking south towards the garbage truck', hears ‘a very loud explosion and immediately felt pain to his right foot and stomach. He can recall seeing what appeared to be long hair flying past his vision.' Colin Nicholls, a Hilton employee, saw Favell pick up the bin, hoist it to his shoulder and carry it to the back of the garbage truck, then empty it and ‘immediately heard the loud explosion and saw an orange/yellow flash'. Norm
keeps going through the testimony of each eyewitness. The prose is like an incantation. His investigation may have failed but he will not let those listening forget who was lost and what was torn apart.
⁴

It's a tiny reprieve from the hysteria surrounding the Coroner's Court, some of it involving impromptu street theatre by sect members disrupting the proceedings, none of which could have given much comfort to the families of the dead. Then abruptly, just when you'd think things couldn't get much more bizarre, Abhiik Kumar makes his first public appearance in association with the Hilton bombing.

He doesn't appear in person, mind you, but he is conjured up spectacularly by the former Hilton night receptionist Manfred Von Gries, who witnessed the explosion from the Hilton escalator. Von Gries tells the coroner that while driving home after giving his witness statement to police the following morning, a heavily bearded man with thick glasses and a turban — yes, a turban — pulled up alongside him in a car containing three other people and threatened to kidnap his son if he continued to speak to the police.

‘I had my passenger window down and I could see the driver's face toward me and scream out “When you go once more to the police, your son will be kidnapped.”'

It then turns out he has identified this man, who spoke with a Texan accent, from surveillance photos
given to him by police as none other than the spiritual leader of the Ananda Marga.
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In court, Von Gries, rather theatrically is asked to put a circle around the turbaned head of the tall skinny man photographed by ASIO at the airport waiting with other members of the Ananda Marga for the arrival of the Indian Prime Minister Mr Desai, about 12 hours before the bombing.
⁶

The papers scream out headlines such as ‘Sect Leader Named in Link to Hilton Bombing'
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and ‘Witness Tells of Threat to Kidnap Son'
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to an enraptured public who can add this to the heady mix of news flashes bursting from the inquest like ‘Caller said ASIO linked to Bombing'
⁹
or ‘Seary Denies Colouring his Story for Effect'.
¹⁰

In a nutshell, the story Manfred Von Gries chronicles amounts to this: immediately before and after the bombing he saw a number of individuals loitering around the George Street entrance to the Hilton. The morning after the bombing he goes to the Campbell Street police station and, along with hundreds of others, gives his witness statement about the explosion and the individuals he had seen.
¹¹
A Detective Sergeant Coco then shows him some photographs and Von Gries ‘selected a photograph of a man standing side on … as being similar to the man I saw in George St'.
¹²
The inference is that the man identified is a member of the Ananda Marga and the sect is somehow informed
of this damning eyewitness account. Abhiik Kumar then mobilises a group of Margiis that very morning who all jump in a car and somehow track down Von Gries as he leaves the police station and (having already somehow found out he has a young son) make the kidnapping threat. Von Gries goes to the police the next day, after staying the night at the Hilton with his son for safety, and reports the threat. He is shown photographs but can't identify the bearded, turbaned man. Von Gries is then subject to ongoing harassment — abusive phone calls, car tampering, break-ins — for the next three or so years.

Here's the problem. Like so many allegations linking the Ananda Marga to the Hilton bombing, these too are besieged by contradictions and evidentiary problems. While no one denies Von Gries says he was threatened, no evidence exists as to whether the police ever recorded these threats in a statement at the time. Then it turns out that the abusive calls to him over the years may have been made by Hilton staff members. Next, and most problematic, Von Gries has only been shown the 12 February 1978 photographs of the Ananda Marga members at the airport, in which he identifies Abhiik Kumar as his verbal assailant, on 28 September 1982, the day before he gives evidence to the inquest. Even worse, the person who is then questioned about these particular photographs is Detective Senior Constable DA Henderson of Special Branch,
¹³
the same Special Branch that is being howled down at the inquest over their questionable recruitment of Seary. The lawyers have a field day dismantling the testimony of Von Gries, Henderson and Special Branch and highlighting the questionable four-year gap between the alleged threat and the identification.

In short, the allegations are worthless and, even if they could be substantiated, fairly pointless, as Abhiik Kumar is now ‘living in Germany with other sect members' under the new name of David Hart.
¹⁴

The coronial inquest topples into the sea a mere two weeks after it started. Once Seary reiterates his claims about Dunn's and Alister's confessions on the way to Yagoona, Coroner Norman Walsh states he is compelled to halt the inquest because there is ‘a prima facie case for murder and conspiracy to murder against Alister and Dunn', and ‘the evidence possibly disclosed' a conspiracy between the two and Anderson.
¹⁵

Despite these bold pronouncements,
¹⁶
nothing comes of them. The New South Wales Attorney-General does not issue indictments and the matter is dropped.
¹⁷

Yet beneath the shipwreck that is the inquest — a monumental waste of time and money that caused substantial pain for the victims and families of those murdered — something is happening deep underground. Simultaneous with the first public mention of Abhiik Kumar in connection with the Hilton bombing at the
inquest, ASIO uncovers some startling intelligence.

So what did ASIO find? This: