Hitman Rodney Collins had fresh targets in sight before death
UNDERWORLD hitman Rodney Collins wanted to kill a former associate just before his own death because he suspected the parolee of giving information on his crimes.
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JUST weeks before his own death this month, notorious underworld hitman Rodney Collins still had a blood lust, the Sunday Herald Sun can reveal.
He wanted to kill a former associate who has been released from jail.
Collins suspected the parolee was giving authorities information about his string of crimes.
The parolee is understood to be a former gangland figure who spent about a decade behind bars before his release last year.
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Ruthless Collins — dubbed “The Cherokee’’ and “The Duke’’ — took many secrets to his grave. He was serving a life term in Barwon Prison when he died on May 9.
The 72-year-old, convicted in 2009 over the 1987 murders of associates Ray and Dorothy Abbey, will have few mourners when his body is released from the coroner’s morgue.
“There wouldn’t be enough people to carry his coffin,’’ one source said. It is not known if his former de facto wife, Kylie Haggar, another partner, Joan Madin, or her daughter, Danielle McGuire, will attend his funeral.
Over the years Collins toyed with police investigators over unsolved murders — including the 2004 executions of police witnesses Terence and Christine Hodson.
In one of his last court hearings, a judge was told Collins spent his time in 23-hour-a-day isolation for his own protection, because inmates believed he was an informant. This resulted in a black eye in 2011.
Believed to be responsible for three husband-and-wife murders, Collins’ rap sheet belied his body count. He has long been linked to nine deaths.
He recently became a lead suspect over the presumed killing of alleged Great Bookie Robbery crew member Laurie Prendergast — who vanished in 1985. A coronial inquest is set to probe his disappearance.
Before his death eight years ago, Dennis “Greedy’’ Smith was the last man questioned by authorities about the infamous 1976 heist of millions of dollars in cash from bookies in Queen St, Melbourne.
He may have also been probed over the murders that occurred during the fallout.
But Smith was of no use.
Smith, who had lost a leg to diabetes and was living out his last days in an Essendon nursing home, offered little help about his knowledge of unsolved crimes.
He did, however, during a visit by the Sunday Herald Sun, recall driving Collins around after a crime and disposing of a car in a junkyard.
Among the infamous “hits’’ Collins is suspected of committing is the pub shooting of standover man Brian Kane in 1982.
Collins and another of his underworld associates, Russell “Mad Dog’’ Cox, who now lives in Queensland, have been the prime suspects over the gunning down of Kane at the Quarry Hotel in Brunswick East. It has long been suspected Smith drove Collins and Cox to the pub to kill Kane.
It was apparent revenge for the execution of heist mastermind Raymond “Chuck’’ Bennett, shot by a disguised man at the old Melbourne Magistrates’ Court in 1979.
Kane was never prosecuted over the shooting, presumed a payback for his brother, Les, being riddled with bullets in a pre-emptive strike by the Bennett crew.