True Crime Australia Part Two: The rise, lies and demise of crooked police inspector Barry Moyse
Barry Moyse should have taken his own advice — but the South Australian Drug Squad chief had more in common with the addicts he busted for a living than he thought.
Law and Order
Don't miss out on the headlines from Law and Order. Followed categories will be added to My News.
Barry Moyse should have taken his own advice — but the South Australian Drug Squad chief had more in common with the addicts he busted for a living than he thought.
It was late 1986 when the decorated Inspector Moyse hatched a plan to provide heroin dealer George Octopodellis with seized drugs, the profits of which they would split.
Moyse needed only $20,000 to pay off a mortgage, he told Octopodellis.
But the flashy young dealer did nothing by halves, telling Moyse “why stop at $20,000? Make something like $250,000?”
Moyse replied: “That’s why people get caught, because they keep going. We should get in and get out quick.”
He was right.
But like a “just this one time” drug user, Moyse quickly became hooked on the fast and easy cash.
Within months, Moyse was up to his ears in a $4m cannabis racket, suddenly finding himself in bed with organised crime figures with alleged links to the Mafia.
That connection thrust Moyse into the glare of the National Crime Authority, and a young ambitious detective named Mick Keelty.
Keelty would weave through a minefield to snare Moyse, and his success launched his stellar career that saw him appointed the first Commissioner of the Australian Federal Police in 2001.
THE ODD COUPLE
Moyse and Octopodellis should have been sworn enemies, but their symbiotic relationship quickly thrived.
Moyse had been promoted to head of the Drug Squad in 1984, three years after leading the indignant charge denying allegations of police corruption, when he was head of the force’s union.
Relishing his high-profile role, Moyse was scathing in his descriptions of those inside the drug trade.
He was instrumental in helping establish the hugely-successful Operation Noah, which helped police nab hundreds of drug dealers of varying status during the 1980s.
Operation Noah proved dead the Aussie notion of never dobbing, and thousands of people flooded phone lines each year.
Moyse was lauded by the public and the media but must have shook his head at the size of his police salary compared to the astronomical wads of cash floating about the underground drug scene.
It’s likely the canny Moyse saw an opportunity when his squad prepared for the 1986 raid on Octopodellis’ apartment overlooking the Adelaide parklands.
No small fish, Octopodellis was high up in a giant heroin network, overseeing about a dozen local dealers.
He demanded to speak to Moyse after detectives found a parcel of pink heroin he’d mailed to himself from Sydney.
Despite having a gun pressed tightly against his throat, Octopodellis told the detective holding the weapon, “I’m not talking to anyone but the boss. You’re only the f … ing foot soldiers.”
The detective replied, “This is your lucky day. The boss doesn’t normally come on jobs, but he’s in on this one.”
Caught red-handed, Octopodellis reverted to survival mode and quietly offered to sacrifice one of his own dealers to Moyse if the boss would turn a blind eye to the raid minutes earlier.
Moyse accepted, and the pair had regular meetings in which Octopodellis happily chirped away, sinking many of his competitors in the illicit drug trade.
While the dealer suggested the initial deal to impart information, it was Moyse who flagged the partnership which would ultimately destroy his career.
GOOD TIMES
For all his public rhetoric, Moyse cared much less about the torment heroin inflicted upon families than he did his own comfort and bank account.
Moyse ironically railed against moves to soften cannabis laws, arguing an expiation notice system would send the wrong message on drug use.
He also knew that heroin sold by Octopodellis had killed three people in August and September 1985.
But the cash was flowing, and his morals sank deeper into the swamp by the day.
Soon Moyse agreed to take part in a large-scale cannabis racket at Penfield Gardens, north of Adelaide, involving big-time traffickers with Mafia links.
A court heard one planning meeting at an Adelaide restaurant was attended by Craig Trimbole, the son of Robert Trimbole and SA parliament would hear claims that NSW Premier Neville Wran and Minister Al Grassby were dirty politicians feeding off the teat of Mafia syndicates.
Far from fearful they’d be caught, the dealer and the top cop took apparent glee in their subterfuge.
Octopodellis was high on heroin and a heightened sense of power, and Moyse was lustily absorbed in his lucrative and exciting double life.
They laughed heartily once as they sat cutting a batch of heroin for sale at Octopodellis’ home.
Sitting alongside the white powder was a magazine with a large photo of Moyse proudly showing off a crop of cannabis seized thanks to Operation Noah.
According to Octopodellis, Moyse laughed and remarked on the “bloody wild” quality of the crop.
“They were top heads, top grass. I wish we had that lot. We would have made a killing,” Moyse quipped.
Octopodellis could scarcely believe he was in partnership with the man he described as the “golden boy” of SA Police.
“He was always on the radio, TV. A lot of (police) would have trusted him. He would have had the say of the whole department,” Octopodellis said in a “tell-all” interview in 1988.
THE NCA ROLLS IN
The National Crime Authority surreptitiously crept into SA in May 1986, as part of an operation codenamed “Matter Number Seven”.
The Calabrian syndicate crossed the line when a hitman was enlisted to carry out the 1977 shooting murder of anti-drugs crusader Donald Mackay in a pub carpark in the cannabis-heartland of Griffith in NSW.
Mafia identity Robert “Aussie Bob” Trimbole had fled the country amid the heat and despite the passage of time, Federal police remained determined to smash the sophisticated and tight-knit drug ring.
So when Barry Moyse bobbed up on the radar, Keelty knew his already-difficult investigation would be even tougher.
Plenty of SA cops were unhappy about the NCA’s mere presence in Adelaide, and some were incensed at the authority’s pursuit of Moyse.
Keelty later acknowledged the delicate nature of the investigation, describing the process of interviewing loyal colleagues of Moyse as “not a pleasant task”.
The NCA enjoyed an unexpected bonus when Keelty found plenty of street-level dealers who gleefully dished the dirt on the Moyse-Octopodellis alliance.
Emboldened by his powerful accomplice, Octopodellis had been lording it over fellow dealers, demanding they sell drugs and return the profits to him and Moyse.
Keelty said the dealers had little choice but to acquiesce to the demand, knowing refusal would lead the Drug Squad straight to their door.
They despised Moyse and Octopodellis equally, and Keelty’s ability to relate to anyone from dignitaries to druggies helped further win their trust and assistance.
But the key to success was Octopodellis, whose name was at the time suppressed and was known simply as “Mr X”.
ARREST
When Barry Moyse and five other men were arrested in May 1987 over the Penfield Gardens dope operation, Octopodellis was oblivious.
He’d vanished from Adelaide the previous Christmas, spending the intervening period off with the fairies in Sydney, where he embarked on a heroin binge of staggering and almost-fatal proportions.
He had considered Moyse and the businessman allegedly pulling the strings as being “as safe as a bank, that no one would get to them”.
Frail, strung out and broke from his outrageous $5000-a-day heroin addiction, Octopodellis knew his final refuge was the NCA.
He agreed to help Keelty, validating William Shakespeare’s famous observation that “misery acquaints a man with strange bed-fellows”.
Octopodellis booked into the methadone program and spent the next year imparting his intimate knowledge of the SA drug network to Keelty and his team.
Keelty described Octopodellis as “a likeable rogue” with “a very charismatic personality” tempered with narcissistic traits that often overpowered commonsense.
With his “ally” Moyse in the gun, Octopodellis knew he would be a marked man.
And when word seeped out that he had switched teams to the NCA, there were plenty of criminals willing to pay good money to have him silenced. Permanently.
Cutting against his natural grain of seeking the limelight, Octopodellis went into witness protection ahead of his planned testimony — but true to his erratic nature, waltzed out of protection the week before Moyse’s trial commenced in July, 1988.
But when the deadly reality of his plight dawned upon him, Octopodellis returned to the nest and gave evidence against Moyse, who pleaded guilty halfway through.
THE HEMP JIGSAW
Moyse had steadfastly denied he was bent, hoping to muddy the waters by saying his dealings with Octopodellis were part of a bigger, legitimate operation.
He hoped the jury would believe his word over that of Octopodellis, who not only profited from misery but repeatedly proved he was willing to double-cross friends to save his own skin.
Moyse even had an explanation for a half block of hash found locked in his work safe.
The chunk fitted together perfectly with a block found in an earlier raid – literally the final piece in a complex jigsaw against Moyse.
Still in his early 40s and realising he could die in prison, Moyse belatedly pleaded guilty to 17 drug charges.
He admitted his involvement in selling heroin and in the Penfield Gardens dope crop, further agreeing to turn on his accomplices in exchange for a reduction in his sentence.
But while Octopodellis said Moyse pocketed at least $200,000 in about six months, the court was told he made about $38,000.
In August 1988, Moyse sat silently in the dock of the packed Supreme Court for sentencing.
Justice Robert Mohr took on the role Moyse built his career upon, lecturing the disgraced Inspector over the shame he had brought upon himself and his family, as well as the entire police force.
“You knew well and had often spoken of the evil of the illicit trade of drugs and especially in heroin,” Justice Mohr said.
“You knew well the suffering that was caused … and yet you indulged in that crime under the cover of your official position for personal gain.”
Moyse must have shuddered when Justice Mohr said his crimes resulted in an overall tally of 93 years in prison.
But Justice Mohr set a head sentence of 27 years with a minimum of 21 years, which was reduced on appeal to a head sentence of 21 years.
Mick Keelty spoke briefly outside court, mixing his metaphors in describing Moyse as “a rotten egg, cut from the bunch”.
The Moyse affair rekindled speculation and gossip that his crimes reflected a pattern with SA Police.
Innuendo also swirled around the fact that Moyse copped one of the longest sentences in SA history, while the key player in the $4m dope crop walked from court on a suspended sentence.
LONE WOLF OR SCAPEGOAT?
Investigative journalist Chris Masters, whose expose on corruption in Queensland led to the Fitzgerald Royal Commission, came to Adelaide to investigate.
Masters was adamant that Moyse was no lone wolf.
“Moyse was not a one-off. Other police were involved in the distribution of drugs,” Masters told the Sunday Mail in 1988.
“Moyse was a product of the system and the system hasn’t changed. I’m not making for excuses for Moyse, I’m not saying he’s innocent.
“But putting Moyse in jail doesn’t solve the problem. It’s just like the multi-headed snake. You catch this bloke, you chop one head off and another one grows straight away.”
As Moyse settled into his mundane existence as just another crim in an SA jail, Octopodellis had again lapsed into the abyss of heroin addiction.
Months after nonchalantly leaving witness protection for the final time, Octopodellis was found dead inside his Porsche on a Sydney street in mid-1989.
Many believe he was given a “hot shot” by associates of criminals he had information on, but such murders are almost impossible to prove and there was scant sympathy among law enforcement for Octopodellis’ passing.
THE FINAL INNINGS
Barry Moyse was quietly released from prison in 1998, completing his incarceration in Port Lincoln before deciding to remain in the seaside haven.
He integrated into the community and took up cricket umpiring on weekends, but had little to say when the Sunday Mail approached him for a chat.
One Port Lincoln resident described Moyse as a “fantastic bloke” who had paid off his debt to society and was entitled to live in peace.
The chequered life of Barry Malcolm Moyse ended in 2010, when he died of complications from liver cancer aged 65.
Whether Moyse was a freelance fly in the ointment or the unlucky scapegoat of a crooked system depends on who you listen to.
Either way, Moyse’s life was a cautionary tale of the intoxicating allure of the easy buck, and supports the adage that “crime doesn’t pay”.
Home invaders steal, then crash, Mercedes
A luxury Mercedes sedan has been stolen by a man and woman during a violent home invasion at Kurralta Park.
It’s official: Notorious child predator to stay locked up
A notorious serial kidnapper and child predator has finally had his bid for release into the community denied after a two-year legal and political battle.