I Catch Killers podcast with Gary Jubelin: Angelo Memmolo reveals how he locked up killer Paul Offer
A detective has revealed the reaction he got when confronted one of the most menacing murderers in Queensland on Gary Jubelin’s hit podcast, I Catch Killers. LISTEN NOW
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Which Detective Inspector Angelo Memmolo story do you want to hear first: the time a suspected IRA bomber tried to get him killed?
The day he marshalled the armed holdup squad in his front yard before a shootout with a gang of professional armed robbers?
Let’s start with the day in 1988 when young Constable Memmolo, fresh out of the academy, found himself at the centre of a riot in inner-Sydney Redfern, with bricks and rocks raining on his head. “We were trying to put a fella in the back of the truck, the policeman in front of me copped a brick in the head and he went straight down,” Memmolo recalls in the latest episode of I Catch Killers with Gary Jubelin, which has been Australia’s number one podcast since its launch two weeks ago.
Memmolo, who went on to become one of Australia’s most prominent and respected homicide detectives, says as a young officer it didn’t even occur to him to pull his gun.
“We got forced back, we had no shields, no helmets and we see (the offender in the police truck) get released, we didn’t have time to lock it. It was raining rocks and bricks and concrete. The guy who fell, we picked him up – you can’t say you weren’t scared,” Memmolo recalls.
“Then somebody says ‘We’ve got two cops in the paddy wagon!’ We pushed back to rescue the girl and the guy – and we found the cab flattened by about two foot. They were standing on top of the cab and pounding it down with the police in it.”
Memmolo went on to become a detective and joined the Armed Hold-Up squad, home to the notorious corrupt cop Roger Rogerson, who shot to national fame when he shot dead drug dealer Warren Lanfranchi in a Chippendale laneway.
“I had nothing but disdain for the fella. Nothing but disdain for the bloke. Shooting somebody is not something to be proud of,” Memmolo says.
Memmolo’s adventures with the “stick-ups”, as the squad was known, included being caught in a gunfight between police and armed robbers at a suburban shopping mall, Eastgardens in Sydney’s southeast.
It was the 1980s, when fatal bank hold-ups were just part of Sydney life, and the armed holdup squad suspected a gang of professional armed robbers were planning to seize an armoured cash-in-transit vehicle as it delivered money to Eastgardens.
“They were armed to the hilt,” Memmolo says. “We’d heard they had a 50-calibre gun on the back of a ute.
“Because I lived around the corner we set (my front yard) up as our command post.
I rang my wife, 7 o’clock in the morning: ‘Gonna come round with a couple of guys, honey, we won’t get in your way’.
“Next thing there were 20 guys, all dressed in black, shotguns being racked in the front yard, neighbours are coming out trying to work out what’s going on. I actually had a really good crook who lived a couple of doors down, he thought we were coming for him. Helicopters going over, (my wife) in her dressing gown trying to serve coffee to all these guys.
“We all roared out and there was a confrontation, the (robbers and security guards) ended up firing rounds – luckily everyone missed. An old lady walking through at the time had a bullet whiz past her head, we ended up arresting them, but it was very tense.”
Perhaps the most menacing individual Memmolo ever locked up was Paul Offer, an Irish murderer who may have been involved in terrorist bombings for the Irish Republican Army, according to police intelligence.
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Offer was living in Australia in the 1990s and was suspected of two callous Sydney shootings: a man named Ronald Mills, who answered his own front door and was executed with a 9mm Luger, and Nagwa Gergis, a St Ives woman who opened her front door to be shot with a crossbow by a man wearing a balaclava.
Memmolo’s team zeroed in on Offer, who was facing trial on fraud charges. Mr Mills and Mrs Gerges’ husband Mark were both due to give evidence against him, and the theory was the shootings were aimed to prevent the trial going ahead.
Police tracked Offer to Queensland, and after a period of surveillance the Queensland and NSW officers together pulled him over while driving his motor home near the Story Bridge in Brisbane.
“He’s cool as a cucumber,” Memmolo says. “He edges towards the rear of this motor home and we keep pushing him back. We took him back to the police station and interview him and got nothing out of him. ‘No, I wasn’t in Sydney, I was here with my family.’
“We didn’t have enough to hold him but we had enough to hold his vehicle to search it. We were hoping for one little bit of evidence. We searched that vehicle – Queensland forensics did an amazing job — for two days and ended up finding a Luger, 9mm, beautiful, we got him.
“We matched the gun to the shooting of Ronald Mills, and also found some arrows pretty similar to the ones that Maher was shot with and (we found) a killing kit, balaclava, garrotter, and now we’re looking back – why was he edging towards the side of his car? It was to get his gun and have it out with the cops.”
Offer went on the run and a massive manhunt ensued, during which Offer stabbed to death his own pet german shepherd, Memmolo says.
“He was very narcissistic. He was a psychopath in the sense that if he needed to kill somebody, then he would.”
Later in prison Offer attempted to orchestrate a hit on Memmolo and his colleague, John Thompson. “Luckily for us one of the crooks was as honest as you could be, he was an armed robber and he told us,” Memmolo said.
Offer was sentenced to 34 years in prison in 2000.
Listen, subscribe or follow I Catch Killers with Gary Jubelin at truecrimeaustralia.com.au, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast
Pre-order his book here.
Originally published as I Catch Killers podcast with Gary Jubelin: Angelo Memmolo reveals how he locked up killer Paul Offer
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