Schoolies for detectives: When police and suspects are on the loose

To extradite a suspect to Victoria is a serious business, although many years ago it was more like schoolies for detectives.

In the more robust days, a trip interstate or overseas to grab a crook was a liquid holiday. The hard work had been done, and the detective would swear to the court that he was authorised to take custody of the prisoner to escort them to a Melbourne cell.

Extradition in handcuffs.Credit: Daily Mirror

Police around the world pride themselves on their hospitality when it comes to visiting officers, and some groups would keep secret funds for long lunches and longer dinners.

Interstate police would flood Melbourne during the Cup Carnival allegedly looking for pickpockets but spending most of their time in the Police Club, while one visiting detective from PNG was hospitalised with alcohol poisoning.

The amount of booze consumed led the Detective Training School to have in its notes a reminder that police returning with crooks on planes should not avail themselves of the high-altitude bar.

On one occasion, a detective was so hungover on the return flight home that his prisoner said he would look after him until they landed. Another time, two detectives and the suspect, all dressed in jeans and looking shabby, were filmed crossing the tarmac. A senior officer rang and yelled that he never again wanted to watch the news where he couldn’t work out who were the crooks and who were the cops.

This week we had the voluntary extradition of Perry Kouroumblis, the suspect in the 1977 murders of Suzanne Armstrong and Susan Bartlett in their Easey Street home in Collingwood.

The extradition team comprised the head of the homicide squad, Dean Thomas; the head of the investigation, Paul Rowe; and key investigator Lisa Metcher.

They took off in secret about 10 days ago during a vicious late-night storm and kept all details confidential until they had their man in the air.

On the return trip, Thomas sat in the row in front, while Rowe and Metcher sat on either side of Kouroumblis. This was no fluke. It was designed to try and establish an off-the-record rapport with the suspect before a formal interview would be conducted.

Perry Kouroumblis, second from right with white beard, in Rome preparing to depart Italy for Australia.Credit: Nine News

Now, if Dean wanted any tips on extraditions, he could have asked his father – the legendary detective Noel “Bull” Thomas who survived five of them.

While Kouroumblis agreed to the process, drug boss Tony Mokbel fought extradition from Athens with legal vigour and grim determination.

Although the case was overwhelming, Mokbel seemed to prefer a rather squalid Greek cell to a cleaner one close to his legal team in Melbourne.

Perhaps the reason was that the yacht Edwena, which he had secretly bought to sail away from Fremantle with a hired Greek crew to avoid pesky charges, was still moored off Athens. If he could have somehow wrangled bail, he would have been off on the high seas to a country that did not have an extradition agreement with Australia.

Tony Mokbel is escorted by plain clothes police officers after appearing before a public prosecutor at Athens Appeals Court building in June 2007.Credit: AP

When he was finally extradited from Greece in 2008 it was considered too risky to put him on a commercial flight, so he travelled on a federally chartered private jet. A detective asked him how he didn’t need to go to the bathroom on the flight. He said, “When you’ve been in a Greek prison you learn to hold on.”

Many years ago, an enterprising Consorting Squad detective enjoyed an extradition so much he did not want it to end, and so hatched a plan with his prisoner, who he had snaffled in London. The cop told the crook words very similar to these: “We both know you are going away for a long time, so here is the deal. If you say you have a phobia about flying they will put us on a cruise ship and I will get you out of the cell every day to have a few beers on the sun deck.”

Naturally, our crook agreed, but the detective backflipped, leaving him in the ship’s cell for the duration. When they disembarked six weeks later the cop had a Mediterranean tan and was five kilos heavier, while the crook looked like he had scurvy and was five kilos lighter.

Which proves one of the iron rules of crime: never get between a detective and a good rort.

New Scotland Yard had its own extradition squad, which may have been the best job in policing – you flew around the world, stayed in good hotels and were entertained by local police.

One member had to buy new, larger suits in Melbourne largely because of his diet, which rarely strayed from Lygon Street and Little Bourke Street. It was said he spent more time in the City Court Hotel than the real city court across the road.

Extradited from London for murder, Truong Hong Phuc asked police to put a handkerchief between his wrist and his Gucci watch so it wouldn’t be scratched.

Truong Hong Phuc.

He was assigned the window seat in the last row, with two detectives taking the seats next to him. When the cabin crew came for the drinks order, the prisoner asked hopefully for “red wine”.

He was given a Coca-Cola. If he was worried, it didn’t impact his appetite, eating Moroccan chicken, Italian salad, a cheese and tomato omelette, stir-fried chicken with black bean sauce, pickled vegetables and a chocolate dessert.

He said to one of the detectives, “Better than prison food.”

At his trial, Truong required a Vietnamese interpreter as he claimed not to understand English, which came as a surprise to the extradition team who watched him laugh listening to the very English Benny Hill on the plane’s comedy audio channel.

When Australia’s best safe breaker, Graham Kinniburgh, was arrested in Sydney, Melbourne police flew up to testify. After the mandatory happy hour at Mascot Airport, they piled onto the plane to take their economy seats for the return flight. Sitting in 1A with a complimentary glass of champagne was Graham. He was acquitted of the charges but was shot dead outside his Kew home in 2003.

The hospitality of Sydney detectives was both generous and notorious. One Victorian detective, concerned at the number and potency of free drinks at a nightclub during a royal commission into corruption, insisted on buying a round. He put down a $50 note and was given change from $100.

Of course, the best way to avoid extradition is to find a country where there is no treaty.

Tipped off by a corrupt cop that he was in the frame of a new royal commission in 1981, drug boss Bob Trimbole fled Australia and was arrested in Ireland in 1984, but as there was no extradition treaty between the countries, he was released. He then chartered a plane and fled to Spain, swapping payola for paella.

He died of natural causes in 1987.

My father, Fred, had a difficult extradition trying to prise a corrupt solicitor out of Hong Kong back in 1963. At an official government function, he saw chief secretary Arthur Rylah and his wife, Lady Ann, who appeared unsteady on her feet, no doubt due to jet-lag.

Asked what he was doing there, Fred explained the extradition process. It was in December and Rylah told him to get home for Christmas, promising to fund his return to get the crook.

Rylah liked police, particularly detectives from the homicide squad. When Lady Ann died a few years later in suspicious circumstances, those detectives were surprisingly quick to accept that it was natural causes.

Many years later when I was in Hong Kong, I caught up with one of the local detectives who had hosted my father. He said on Fred’s first trip there had been a discussion about how there were no illegal firearms in the colony.

On the second trip, during a succulent Chinese meal, a Victoria Police service .32 Browning appeared on the Lazy Susan, smuggled through customs to prove a point.

Cat burglar John Harvey Rider.Credit: Victoria Police

“He could have got six months,” the policeman, Norman Whiteley, said.

Yeah, but he won the argument. (As an aside, I was the only primary school kid in Preston who could use chopsticks, even if the beef in black bean sauce was collected from the Chinese takeaway in a saucepan.)

On Tuesday, we had the funeral of legendary retired detective inspector Ian “Bluey” Fountain, aged 91. There were more than 400 family members, friends and former colleagues at the Police Academy Chapel for the funeral. And there was an unexpected mourner, John Harvey Rider, Australia’s most notorious cat burglar.

Rider pulled around 1000 jobs, often robbing four homes a night, over seven years.

Fountain was the policeman who persuaded Rider to talk. At the funeral, Rider walked over to Chief Commissioner Shane Patton to apologise for his former misdeeds. He turned up at the wake as well.

Fountain struck a deal with Builders Labourers Federation boss Norm Gallagher on the protocol for demonstrations. A little bit of pushing and shoving was great theatre for the TV cameras, but anything more would result in a very stern response from Bluey’s Boys.

This meant the point could be made without bloodshed and both sides went home happy. The deal was done and was never broken.

Vale Bluey.