Hitman Roy Pollitt has been kicked out of Australia by Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton
HITMAN Roy “Red Rat” Pollitt, who infamously bungled a murder by killing the wrong man, was deported back to the UK as part of Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton’s continuing blitz on foreign-born criminals.
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INEPT hitman Roy “Red Rat” Pollitt is one of 3241 foreign-born criminals who have been ordered out of Australia in the past three years.
Pollitt was kicked out and sent back to Britain last year.
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The Herald Sun revealed yesterday that the visas of 1200 foreign-born criminals were cancelled in 2017, under a continuing government purge. Of these, 217 were based in Victoria.
Pollitt was paroled in 2008, having been jailed for life in 1990 after bungling a hit by killing the wrong man — his target’s brother-in-law.
He had been hired by the late drug dealer, Dennis “Mr Death” Allen, one of Melbourne’s notorious Pettingill family, to kill underworld heavy Alan Williams in 1984.
But Pollitt, staking out Williams’s Lower Plenty home, blundered when Lindsay Simpson pulled into the driveway. Mr Simpson and his wife, Leonie, were arriving to visit his sister — Williams’s wife, Linda.
Mr Simpson was about to lift their eight-month-old girl out of the car when his wife, still in the car, heard him say: “Hey, what’s this? You have obviously got the wrong fellow. My name’s Lindsay Simpson; I have got a wife and a daughter in the car.”
She then heard a shot. Pollitt, unconvinced, had shot him in the back of the head.
Allen’s defacto later gave evidence that soon after, she picked up the phone in the home she shared with Allen and heard Pollitt say: “Tell Dennis the job’s done.”
A few days later she heard Allen berating Pollitt after they realised he had murdered the wrong man.
Allen had wanted Williams dead because they had fallen out over money that Williams owed Allen. One police theory is that the hit was ordered after Williams refused to pay $50,000 he owed over a failed contract to murder New South Wales undercover police officer Mick Drury.
Mr Drury had earlier travelled to Melbourne as part of an undercover operation to nab Williams, a major drug dealer in Victoria.
He bought 400g of heroin from Williams with $120,000 in marked bills.
Following his arrest Williams tried to get off the drugs charge by getting since-disgraced NSW detective Roger Rogerson to try to bribe Mr Drury to change his evidence. Mr Drury rejected the bribe.
Mr Drury was later shot twice by Melbourne hitman Christopher Dale Flannery, but survived. Rogerson was alleged to have acted as Flannery’s getaway driver.
Police believe Williams refused to pay for the botched hit, angering Flannery.
Williams was tipped off that a contract had been taken out on his life. He later told the Sunday Herald Sun that on the day he found out his life was in danger, he decided not to go home.
“I was told I was to be knocked (killed),” he said.
“I was completely paranoid and I clean forgot that Lindsay (Simpson) was to come to my house that night,” Williams said.
That bad memory proved fatal for his brother-in-law, because by then Allen had already commissioned Pollitt to kill Williams.
And the night that Mr Simpson came visiting, Pollitt was lying in wait.
In 1998, Williams was jailed for 14 years for his own part in the conspiracy to murder Mr Drury.
Rogerson was also charged with conspiring to kill Mr Drury, and Williams gave evidence against him, saying that the police officer had been involved in the murder plot.
But Rogerson was acquitted of the charge.
However, Rogerson is now in jail serving his own life sentence for murder after being convicted in 2016 of murdering drug dealer Jamie Gao, 20.