Former police officer Glenn Pullin admits to ‘possibly’ misleading Silk-Miller murder trial
A former police officer among the first to arrive at the Silk-Miller murder scene has confessed he “possibly” committed perjury by signing an altered statement, which was later critical in convicting Jason Roberts alongside Bandali Debs over the 1998 murders.
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A former police officer among the first to arrive at the Silk-Miller murder scene has confessed he “possibly” committed perjury.
Glenn Pullin, being grilled on the second day of a major anti-corruption inquiry, admitted he signed an altered statement that indicated there was more than one offender by saying “they were on foot”.
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The detail, not in his original statement, was critical in the conviction of Jason Roberts alongside Bandali Debs over the 1998 murders of officers Gary Silk and Rodney Miller.
The Herald Sun triggered the Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission probe into alleged police misconduct when the paper in 2017 uncovered Mr Pullin’s first statement, buried for 19 years.
In a bombshell session on Tuesday, Mr Pullin was asked if he gave false evidence at the 2001 committal hearing in the murder case.
“Ah, no, as it turns out — well, yeah, quite possibly,” he said. Asked the same question about the trial he said: “I don’t know.”
An emotional Mr Pullin later added: “You don’t want to be the guy standing in court … (and) you’re the reason why this homicide fell over because you wouldn’t change your statement.”
Assisting counsel Jack Rush, QC, further asked Mr Pullin if he told the jury in the trial that he had made two differing statements.
“No. I don’t know if it was ever asked. No one ever asked it,” Mr Pullin replied.
Mr Rush finally put to Mr Pullin: “From your perspective, so long as what you were saying was the truth in your second statement, it didn’t matter that you didn’t disclose the first one; is that the way you viewed it?”
Mr Pullin agreed: “That’s probably a fair way to look at it.”
The former officer also accepted that George Buchhorn, a senior investigator in the Lorimer Taskforce probing the murders, provided the falsified statement for him to sign in 1999, backdated to the morning of the killings.
Mr Pullin initially said he had no recollection of retyping his statement or who asked him to make changes, only acknowledging he must have signed it.
“On your evidence, the second statement has been prepared for you?” he was asked.
“Ah, I would — I’m going to say yes, it was done by somebody else,” Mr Pullin replied.
He also said the only time he could remember meeting Mr Buchhorn was at the committal.
But then he was shown a diary note in Mr Buchhorn’s day book confirming the Lorimer investigator had met Mr Pullin “re clarification of statement” on June 21, 1999 — 13 months before the arrests of Roberts and Debs.
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He agreed that Mr Buchhorn had likely visited him, saying, “Yeah, absolutely.”
“So, if the allegation is that he’s just provided me a statement and said, ‘Here, sign this,’ then, then that — the diary in the day book — would suggest that is in fact the case,” Mr Pullin told the hearing.
At one point, when his recollection was tested, he said “I can’t agree, I can’t deny. I don’t know … oh f---, I can’t even remember what I did yesterday, you know.”
During a rambling witness testimony, Mr Pullin later declared: “For all you people, Rod Miller is a f---ing hero who died. Rod Miller was my f---ing nightmare. So, there you go.”
The public hearings continue on Wednesday.