Best of Andrew Rule: The murder of Rocky Iaria in Shepparton

As a crook, Rocky Iaria made a good fruit picker. And had he been jailed over a brazen crime against a rich tomato grower, he'd probably be alive today. Instead, years after he vanished, Rocky's body was found somewhere completely unexpected.  

Rocky Iaria was found buried in an elderly woman’s grave at a cemetery in Shepparton.

A lawyer's throwaway line almost certainly got Rocky Iaria killed.

He was from Shepparton. He loved fast cars, easy money and hanging with tough guys but he was really just a kid out of his depth.

Rocky vanished in the spring of 1991.

There were rumours he’d done a runner because he couldn’t take the heat from a big burglary in which he had allegedly played sidekick to a Shepparton Calabrian identity, “Vince”.

Vince’s crew were prime suspects for a series of burglaries and robberies of wealthy Italians. They didn’t come much richer than Stephen Monti, a Bendigo tomato grower who came home in May 1989 to find his house ransacked.

The crooks had good information because they found Monti’s secret safe bricked cunningly into a fireplace.

He lost about $300,000 cash plus gold and jewellery.

The total haul was more than $500,000 — enough to buy a street of houses in Bendigo or Shepparton in 1989, and an object lesson in why it’s not smart to stash cash at home.

As a crook, young Rocky, who was barely 19, made a good fruit picker.

He and Vince were arrested after police got a tip-off.

They admitted nothing.

Rocky Iaria was found buried above an elderly woman in a grave at Pine Lodge Cemetery, Shepparton.

The grave in Pine Lodge Cemetery.

In fact, Vince stayed silent even when mysteriously abducted by large, masked men who tried to beat the location of the loot out of him. After that, it wasn’t hard to stay silent in court.

The pair’s first trial in early 1991 ended in a hung jury.

Rocky must have felt lucky but the truth is if he’d been jailed he would probably be alive today.

Instead, he and Vince prepared to face another trial. They had every reason to think they could beat the charges again second time around.

That is, until police found a stolen video recorder from the Bendigo heist at the house of Rocky’s uncle.

The cheap machine is enough to tie Rocky — and therefore Vince — to the robbery, as lawyers correctly point out.

On September 6, 1991, just two weeks before the new trial, Rocky vanished.

His car was found at Benalla railway station.

It looked as if he’d bolted, a theory Vince promotes with local police — but his parents never believed it, because they had put up their house as bail surety.

It became one of those dreadful haunting mysteries that torture the parents of the missing. Until six years later, when a grave digger at the local Pine Lodge cemetery struck a body wrapped in plastic just below the surface while opening an old grave for a burial later that day.

It was Rocky Iaria’s remains.

As for Vince, the legal advice was dead right: no Rocky, no case. He was acquitted.

No one has ever been charged over Rocky Iaria’s death.

*This story was first published in the Sunday Herald Sun in 2018. 

Originally published as Best of Andrew Rule: The murder of Rocky Iaria in Shepparton