Secret police files: When hitman Mr Rent-a-Kill became the hit
“He said mate, I need your help … I’m gonna knock someone off … I wanna know about blood, how long blood lasts.” This was the chilling conversation — revealed for the first time today — before hitman Christopher Flannery disappeared. READ THE SECRET POLICE FILES
Christopher Flannery was starting to feel like a caged rat and should’ve been dead almost at the start of Sydney’s gangland war.
At 5.45pm on Sunday, January 27, 1985 while farewelling guests from his Arncliffe house on Turella St, about 30 shots were fired at him from an automatic weapon.
Secret police files, obtained by the Daily Telegraph, say that somehow he escaped with just “slight wounds to an ear and a hand”.
He would refuse to help police with the investigation into his attempted murder, but transcripts of interviews with his wife Kathleen reveal details that would go on to become Sydney folklore.
She told cops a green Jaguar sedan stopped at the front of their house to “discharge a firearm in their direction”.
Flannery grabbed her and pulled her behind their parked sedan for cover.
“As her husband pushed her head down, a bullet struck his hand and one also nicked his ear,” the files say.
“Their 11-year-old daughter had commenced to come out the front door and two bullets went within inches of her head.
“Mrs Flannery observed the gunman manipulating the weapon, either trying to fit another magazine clip or clearing some malfunction.
“She described the gunman as a man in his late 30s, heavy set, dressed in a shirt, and appeared to be wearing a wig and false moustache.”
Weeks later Flannery would finally talk to the police.
He said it was “obvious” that a crime boss angered over a pokies feud “was behind the shooting.”
“He inferred that the feud had come too far to be resolved. He stated that his daughter had almost been killed and was then suffering a nervous disorder … he stated that he would have to take the initiative to survive.”
The secret files reveal incriminating evidence that the crime boss had asked a police source to identify who exactly was this “Mr Rent-a-Kill” that another leading crime figure, George David Freeman, had hired just weeks before the shooting.
THE POKIES FEUD
The files reveal “Mr Rent-a-Kill” had become embroiled in gangland war with one of the city’s top crime lord who to this day cannot be named for legal reasons.
The Pokies have always been a part of Sydney, for better or worse. So in a way it makes sense that our greatest criminal feud erupted over what the police files refer to as “amusement machines”.
On January 15, 1985, there was “a number of poker machines removed from an ethnic club” in Sydney’s inner suburbs. Sounds boring enough but the issue was that these machines belonged to a Sydney crime lord.
When he found out that a Freeman lieutenant was involved in removing the pokies there were kill threats made by both parties.
Freeman needed muscle. It was the perfect job for his new “minder” Flannery.
But the crime boss wasn’t the kind to wait for a war to come to him.
The files say it in black and white — he simply did not “sit back if threatened”.
“He once told me that if anything ever threatened his life or family he would do something about it first. He is a man totally capable of it,” the secret files read.
So Flannery had already lost part of his ear and some of his hand when the boss’ gunman came for him at the front of his Arncliffe house and it was only by a miracle he survived and that his 11-year-old daughter wasn’t killed too.
And it was about to get worse.
SAYER IT AIN’T SO
Thirty-eight-year-old Michael John Sayers loved horses. He owned a stack of them and it cost him a small fortune. There was “Royal Canvasser”, “Battle Action” and “Knight of Industry” among others.
On February 16 in 1985, this drug dealer with a knack for “armed robbery” had run his own last race.
A very close friend of Flannery and an associate of Flannery’s boss — underworld kingpin George Freeman — he was collateral damage in the ongoing turf war.
After spending the day at the Canterbury races, Sayers and his partner Marian Ware returned home at 9.55pm. It was a Saturday night and the pair were looking forward to a quiet nightcap before bed.
But two masked men wearing dark clothes waiting for them had other ideas.
As Sayers got out of his car to pull up the garage roller door they snuck up behind him and fired two shots.
According to the secret police files, one entered the “left side” of his back “lacerating the aorta and passing through both lungs”.
The second bullet “entered the back”.
His lungs filled with so much blood that a post mortem would record how more than two litres had to be drained from them.
The police dossier offers a simple reason for the Sayers hit.
After the near-miss on Flannery, his enemies simply went after the next best thing — his good friend and close “ally”.
Feeling like he now had nowhere to turn, Mr Rent-a-Kill tried to answer blood with blood.
FURY ROAD
It was like a scene out of Mad Max.
Victor Camilleri and Kevin Theobold had just left the house of the crime boss Flannery believed had tried to kill him on April 3 and were cruising in their orange coloured Falcon sedan when they were suddenly being run off the road by a Valiant sedan.
The pair, both in their mid-20s, were good friends of Sydney’s number one gangster and used his home gym on a daily basis.
A number of shots were fired from the Valiant — one entering Camilleri’s body through the neck “then puncturing the lung, finally lodging in the stomach”.
Yet they managed to pull the car over, abandon it and escape the execution attempt by fleeing to the backyard of a nearby home.
The police file said police would later find out the abandoned Valiant used in the job had recently been sold for $650 cash.
Oddly, the name given to the seller was that of the crime boss.
In reality, it was bought by Flannery.
He had used the name of his nemesis when he bought the vehicle as a sick calling card for the person he was going to execute.
When he fired the shots into the orange Falcon he had assumed the crime boss was in the car too.
“There is little doubt that the shooting of Camilleri was a mistake when in fact (the boss) should have been the victim,” the secret police files say.
Camilleri and Theobold were merely collateral damage by reason of their friendship with the true target of the hit.
MURDER OF A FRIEND, BUT WHY?
From afar, the death of Anthony Eustace just doesn’t add up among the others.
At 7pm on April 23 a number young kids at football training at Cahill Oval in Arncliffe hear several shots ring out.
Startled, they look up and see someone running off into the distance and another person — Anthony Eustace — writhing in agony.
As they get closer they notice he was lying in a pool of blood.
“Are you OK?” one of them asked.
“I’ve been shot … about four or five times,” Eustace, on the floor next to his gold Mercedes, told them.
Even on his death bed later that night Eustace wouldn’t help police figure out who killed him.
Shooting: Dying Anthony Eustace’s defiant last words to police
What added to the intrigue was that one of the kids who witnessed the murder also said they saw a brown Valiant sedan at the scene.
And Eustace had definitely been on his way to meet Flannery.
But why would Mr Rent-a-Kill top one of his own in the middle of a gangland war when he seemingly needed every mate he could find?
The secret files suggest that while there was “no obvious motive”, the truth was that by now there didn’t need to be one with Flannery.
He was anxious, paranoid and had been on the run living in different motels since the attempt on his life.
He may have thought Eustace had turned on him, or that he couldn’t trust him any more.
“With Flannery there did not have to be a motive … he could turn on you at any time,” the documents say.
MISSING IN ACTION
Flannery had been living at “various motels and hotels” ever since his attempted murder, including the “Hyatt Kingsgate” and the “Airport Hilton”.
But he kept in constant contact with his wife Kathleen.
So much so that when she hadn’t heard from him since 8am on the afternoon of May 9 she had a sinking feeling in her gut.
By 9pm she had called the NSW Police drug task force to tell them she thought he had been “murdered”.
While Flannery was on the run the ground beneath him was rapidly changing.
In the middle of a gangland war in which he was meant to be the muscle for the side of George Freeman, he would suddenly find himself a lone wolf when the crime boss made up with his opposing number in an “unlikely” pact that no one saw coming.
It meant Mr Rent-a-Kill, who had become increasingly uncontrollable, was suddenly an issue for both sides.
The top secret police files conclude the “scene was set” where Flannery could be “betrayed by alleged friends” and executed.
FOLLOW: True Crime Australia on Facebook and Twitter
GOTCHA!
On the day he disappeared, Flannery was wearing a “tracksuit top, casual trousers and expensive jewellery items”.
He was also carrying binoculars, a light brown wig, his passport and a “loaded, .38 calibre pistol” that was tucked into the “waistband of his track suit”.
Ironically, the gun had been provided by one of the friends that cops believe he had shot dead — Eustace.
The secret police files suggest he was meant to be seeing his boss Freeman at his house, and after car troubles had actually organised for a taxi to drive him to the meeting.
He would never be seen again.
A never-before-published police transcript of two mutual associates talking over the phone alleges that crime kingpin Freeman had reached out to one of them in the days leading up to Flannery’s May 9 vanishing asking for advice on how to kill someone at home and get away with it.
Associate one: “He said mate, I need your help … I’m gonna knock someone off … I wanna know about blood, how long blood lasts … how can (I) scrub it off … he’s said (he’s) gonna do it at home. He’s gonna brick a bloke at home”
Associate two: “Are they just gonna make this c--- disappear?”
Associate one: “Yeah I think so … he says it’s gonna be blood in the carpet … I said cut the f---ing bit out and throw it away you know”
Associate two: “Burn it in the fire … put a bloody fire on your carpet, have an extinguisher there and burn all the carpet”.
The pair would specifically say the hit was going to happen at “Freeman’s house” and gossip about how “dicey” the plan was. At one point they discuss that maybe vinegar could remove the blood stains.
The cops — under public pressure from Flannery’s wife to catch the killer, which included a prime time 60 Minutes interview where she accused them of not doing enough — searched Freeman’s home but found nothing incriminating.
TRAPPINGS OF MURDER?
However, The Daily Telegraph — in publishing a full write-through of the secret gangland police files for the first time — can reveal that police had canvassed one theory about how Sydney’s most notorious killer was executed.
It’s a little known fact that cops searched Freeman’s house twice.
The second search was conducted on May 20.
At first, nothing “of note” was found.
But then they picked up on something odd in the den.
Against one wall was a cupboard that was out of proportion. “It was eventually realised that the shelf portion of the cupboard was a door and capable of being swivelled”.
It was a trap door that when pushed “revealed a large compartment” that was “sufficient in size to accommodate two people”.
Some police believe Flannery could have either been murdered in this small space or it could have been used to store the body.
The police didn’t pick up on its existence the first time round — leaving Freeman and his goons potentially time to clean up any incriminating evidence.
BODY OF EVIDENCE
The secret police files simply label the gangland murders as “resolved” after the still unsolved death of Flannery.
However, there are a few catches.
They say the pact between Freeman and the crime lord rested on the “sufferance” of both to share power over Sydney’s underbelly.
It also admits that “some of the operational strategies employed throughout this investigation have not been committed to paper”.
And then there’s the lack of a body.
Something that to this day remains a mystery.
The secret files admit that it is “doubtful” the investigation will ever be resolved to “complete satisfaction” until the remains of Mr Rent-a-Kill can be examined.
READ THE POLICE FILES IN FULL
‘Living nightmare’: Family pain of Aussies killed in the Philippines
The family of an Australian couple found dead in a hotel room broke down as they revealed the cruelty behind the senseless murder the Philippines.
Scary way criminals are using GPS trackers
Almost half of all GPS trackers are going to buyers with nefarious backgrounds and many are allegedly used in high-profile cases including the alleged murder of bikie boss Alen Moradian.