Now Peter “Razor” Slade is coming home to fight for justice.

The Vietnam Vet and weapons specialist, who changed his name from Drummond, is armed not with a machine gun but with fresh evidence he says will prove he was framed for the 1980s gangland-style murder of Kings Cross hotelier Adrian Kay and the conspiracy to murder Bill Vandenburg, the gunman who shot dead Megan Kalajzich in her bed.

Scroll down to learn more about the case which sparked a life outside Australia

Slade, 68, whose life reads like an Indiana Jones-style movie, is coming back to set the record straight and see if he can sue the NSW Government for his wrongful arrest and incarceration.

“It has been 30 years and I’m still angry as hell, as I know all the facts, much of which haven’t been told and I have nothing to lose and plenty to gain,” Slade, 68, said yesterday from Cambodia.

Blown up nine times while riding shotgun for seven years across Iraq, he lost 18 teeth which has left him with a lisp but despite the daily dangers, there was one face that haunted him when he had private time: Fred Many, the main prosecution witness against him in both trials.

Many had 12 years shaved off his 20-year sentence for raping and trying to murder a 15-year-old girl as a reward for giving evidence in a series of high-profile cases in the 1980s and 90s, including Slade’s, before he was exposed as a manipulative liar.

When Many walked from Long Bay Jail in the early hours of Saturday March 4, 1995, to a blaze of publicity, his release was blamed for the downfall of the then-Liberal government that same day in the state election because they had done nothing to keep him locked up.

It was also Slade’s birthday and a trigger for him leaving Australia.

“I jumped on a plane with a few dollars in my pocket and a one-way ticket to Cambodia,” Slade said.

“With Many back out on the streets, I couldn’t trust myself. He had stitched me up. My life was wrecked.”

Slade’s CV as a soldier, gun for hire and security contractor began when he was conscripted as a 20-year-old from his home in Swan Hill.

“I jumped on a plane with a few dollars in my pocket and a one-way ticket to Cambodia”

After Vietnam, he worked around Asia and Rhodesia as a security consultant and became heavily committed to a cause he felt strongly about, helping the Khmer People’s National Liberation Front in Cambodia in the fight against the murderous Khmer Rouge.

“Melbourne was the main recruitment ground for mercenaries in the 60s, 70s and 80s,” he said.

“If you had the connections and wanted to get a gig overseas, there was a small network of us that you could call and we used to meet up in the back bar of the Southern Cross Hotel.”

He turned down an invitation to join the bungled 1981 Seychelles coup staged by “Mad Mike” Hoare on behalf of ex-president James Mancham who had been deposed by leftist Albert Rene.

The story that emerged during Slade’s court cases was that in 1986, he was recruited by Seychelles expat Brian Hoffman to mount another coup attempt to put Mancham back in power with a team of six or seven who were to be armed with grenade launchers, plastic explosives, M-16 rifles and gas and smoke canisters.

The cost was between $400,000 and $580,000.

The group met a number of times at the King Arthur’s Court Hotel in Kings Cross, owned by underworld figure Adrian Kay. In May 1986, Kay was shot dead in his office at the hotel.

In September, Slade, then 38, was arrested on Hamilton Island and charged with Kay’s murder.

In Long Bay Jail, he spent four weeks in segregation in 13 wing for his own safety. The wing also housed notorious informers Many and two other men.

It was the heyday for prison informers and within weeks Kay was charged with conspiracy to poison Vandenburg, who was in jail awaiting trial for the murder of the wife of Manly millionaire hotelier Megan Kalajzich.

Vandenburg committed suicide before the case got to trial, Slade pleaded guilty to the Seychelles coup and he was acquitted of the murder of Kay, despite evidence from Many who he was alleged to have confessed to.

In March 1989 Slade was convicted of conspiracy to kill Vandenburg based solely on the evidence of the three informers and sentenced to 14 years with a non-parole period of eight years.

A year later, his conviction was overturned by the Court of Criminal Appeal after solicitor Leigh Johnson came forward to say that when she was seeing a client during a jail visit, Many, who she didn’t know, told her he was lying.

Slade was released with no conviction after five years.

Meanwhile Many had put out a murder contract on his young rape victim, Kirstyn Austin, and her and her mother were living under witness protection.

‘Different reasons’

Two years after his release, Many died of a heart attack.

Slade returned to Australia briefly for a visit in 2002 where he met his current wife, Nen. They returned to Thailand where their home was wiped out by the tsunami in 2004 and with nothing left, Slade moved on to Iraq.

The money was good and his call sign was Razor.

“I had a habit of carrying a knife so razor became my nickname and then my call sign,” he said.

“Everyone goes there for different reasons. It’s high risk and I made and lost some good friends there. It was tough.”

A private investigator has uncovered fresh evidence that Slade was framed.

“The bottom line is that I need to get back to Sydney and get a legal firm that believes in me and fight this to the bitter end, not to get justice for myself but everybody who was set up by them,” Slade said.

“I need some peace in my life.”

After living on the edge, he wants to return to Sydney, secure some justice and publish a book of his life on the frontline — “Razor’s Edge”.

‘If I could have one wish it would be for Many to still be alive. I want him to pick up the newspaper and see that I’m back,” he said.

The high roller whose killer was never found

Adrian Kay did not like to go unnoticed.

He was rich and liked to show it off, driving a gold Rolls Royce and running the King Arthur’s Court Hotel in the flashy Kings Cross of the 1980s where he was desperate to be accepted in the criminal underworld.

His former bodyguard was his mate, Robert “Bob the Basher” Rackich, a nasty North Shore street fighter, also known as ”Iron Bar Bob”.

On March 27, 1986, Kay didn’t even bother to get out of the Rolls Royce when he shot Bob the Basher in the chest outside Prontos Bar and Restaurant in Double Bay.

Basher didn’t miss a beat, turned around and went back into the restaurant to finish his meal.

He turned up in Central Local Court when Kay appeared in the dock charged with his attempted murder and supported his application for bail, much to Kay’s consternation.

Kay, 35, was released on bail and two months later he was dead, shot in his office at the hotel on a busy Friday night.

Basher was the prime suspect and was interviewed by police but three months later he was dead himself, aged 34, when a yellow Boxer Ferrari V-12 in which he was a passenger hit a telegraph pole at high speed in Kings Cross. Kay’s bullet was still in his chest.

Peter Drummond, 38, then working as a Melbourne-based health consultant, was arrested on Hamilton Island in September.

Drummond, who has since changed his name to Slade, thought it was over a coup he had been helping to organise to overthrow the government of the Seychelles on behalf of ex-president James Mancham. Instead he was charged with Kay’s murder.

Some of Drummond’s fellow plotters knew Kay and they had met at the King Arthur’s Court Hotel a few times. Drummond pleaded not guilty, said he had never met Kay, was in Melbourne at the time of the murder and that two alleged eye witnesses and prison informer Fred Many were all lying.

Many claimed Drummond had confessed to him.

The jury took less than 30 minutes to return a not guilty verdict and Drummond was seen with tears in his eyes in the dock.

No-one else has been charged with Kay’s murder.

Drummond pleaded guilty to a charge under the Crimes (Foreign Incursions and Recruitment) Act and was jailed for 18 months which was backdated as he had already sent two years in jail on remand.