How the Painters and Dockers were brought down by a hard-boiled cop and a reporter
THEY were behind at least 15 murders and terrorised Melbourne, but the Painters and Dockers were no match for a hard-boiled detective, an eccentric journo and a photographer hidden in a shipping container.
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IN the 1960s and 70s, the feared Painters and Dockers union became Melbourne’s hub for organised crime.
In this extract from Once a Copper, author Vikki Petraitis tells the story of detective Brian Murphy and journalist David Richards as they planned to take the rogue union — whose power struggles led to 15 murders and 23 attempted murders — down once and for all.
EXTRACT: HOW THE SOG EXECUTE A RAID
‘I’ll blow your f----n legs off’
DAVID Richards was a journalist and a little Pommy bastard whose legs Brian threatened to blow off the first time he met him.
Richards had contacted Mick Miller to get permission to write an exposé on the Painters and Dockers for The Bulletin.
Assistant Commissioner Bill Conn rang Brian and said that David Richards was coming to his office.
‘Do everything possible to help him,’ ordered the assistant commissioner.
‘What’s all this bulls — t?’ Brian spluttered. ‘Since when has the press been kind to us?’
‘Shut your mouth and do as you’re told,’ Conn said, then hung up.
At the end of the call, Brian stopped in his tracks. Was this a joke? Was it really Conn on the phone or was someone playing a trick. He rang Conn back and got his secretary. She said Conn didn’t want to talk because he was still fuming at Brian’s attitude. Brian’s mistrust of the press dated from the Collingburn trial when he saw how they twisted the truth to enhance the headlines, regardless of the real people they mowed down in the process. When David Richards arrived at their door, one of the blokes announced him.
EXTRACT: PSYCHOANALYSING GANGITANO
‘There’s a Pommy bloke outside who wants to talk to you. Reckons he’s a journalist.’
‘Bring him in,’ Brian said.
The journalist appeared in Brian’s office. He had dark hair with a sprinkling of distinguished grey at the side and he wore a fancy suit that looked Savile Row. That’s why they all hated him before he had finished introducing himself.
‘David Richards is my name, and I’ve been sent here to work on the Painters and Dockers with you chaps and do a story.’
He was short and authoritative, with a posh Pommy voice that went down like a lead balloon in the rough and tumble world of the Metropolitan Regional Crime Squad offices.
There were a lot of stunned faces in the office that day.
‘We have a few rules here, David,’ said Brian.
‘Yes. Yes. I understand,’ said Richards.
‘No you don’t f----n understand,’ said Brian. ‘Will you just shut up for a minute.’
‘Good. Good.’ Toffy voice. Dismissive wave of the hand. ‘You’ll see things here that won’t be print-worthy and if you print them, I’ll blow your f----n legs off.’
‘Good. Good.’
Brian couldn’t believe this bloke. Normally, his threats to shoot people at least gave them pause. ‘Go away and think about it so no one accuses me of not giving you a choice.’
HOW PAINTERS AND DOCKERS WAR EXPLODED IN MELBOURNE
A journalist was fair game
The toffy pom was gone about thirty seconds before he was back, knocking on the door again. He’d thought about it and wanted in.
One of the reasons that Brian didn’t shoot him in the legs was that if David could bring down the Painters and Dockers, that would be a win-win for everyone.
Collingburn aside, the rorting and criminal activity around the union was the bane of every copper’s existence.
Another thing that angered Brian was that he suspected that a couple of cops who worked the docks undermined their colleagues by passing on information about raids and police activity in return for a buck or a favour.
EXTRACT: THE DEATH OF MELBOURNE’S FIRST SAFECRACKER
David sat down and told Brian his plan. The more he talked about the Painters and Dockers, the more intelligent Brian could see he was.
He had researched a fair bit of material that he had dug up himself. And so, David began to spend a lot of time at the office and on patrol.
Whatever else David Richards was, he was keen. And he wasn’t bound by police regulations or budgetary constraints. Mick Miller had authorised him to carry a gun when he accompanied the squad out on patrol — probably figuring that while the Painters and Dockers wouldn’t have a go at police, a journalist was fair game.
David organised a permit and bought a .38 snub nose revolver, Smith and Wesson, same as the police carried, for authenticity.
Brian took David to the back of St Albans for target practice. The last thing he needed was the journalist firing off shots at random. The target practice went well and it turned out, David could handle a gun.
Word got round pretty quickly that there was a journo running around with a gun who was working on the Painters and Dockers. Brian wondered if the rumours came from David, himself — he was no shrinking violet.
A top-secret undercover operation
Of the dozens of ideas David had to get information on the Painters and Dockers, one of his wildest was to climb the tower stack at Newport and set up surveillance cameras to trap the Dockers.
He couldn’t get permission to climb the tower, so his next crazy idea was to use a shipping container on the docks right opposite the office where the Painters and Dockers went to get paid.
David brought down a photographer from Sydney and then disguised the shipping container with a huge tarp with holes cut into it.
EXTRACT: THE HUNGARIAN MELBOURNE DEFECTION PLOT
One payday, David, a couple of Metropolitan Regional Crime Squad detectives and his photographer climbed into the container in the early hours before the Painters and Dockers arrived.
The rest of the squad were hidden around the docks in case the ruse was discovered.
The operation was top secret.
Brian told no one, especially not his bosses. When the bosses rang to see how David was going, Brian was always vague in his response.
He knew that if word got out of the surveillance idea, he could end up with a couple of dead coppers and a dead Pom who he had grown rather fond of.
By the end of the day, David had photographs of blokes tearing the tops off half a dozen envelopes, tipping out the cash and pocketing it. This ‘ghosting’ had been going on for years. The union would quote that a job required 60 men, then send a fraction of that number to do the work. A dozen men would collect multiple pay packets. David, in his shipping container for a day with the support of Brian’s crew brought the entire racket to a halt.
Brian took out warrants and prepared to raid all the Painters and Dockers joints on a particular morning. It was all going well until one of the bosses arrived to oversee the warrants. Brian handed them over to him and he put them in his folder.
‘There are to be no raids this morning,’ he said.
‘What?’ Brian could not believe his ears.
‘Go about your business.’
‘Where did these orders come from?’ he roared, furious.
‘Right from the top.’
Brian was furious. The boss and the warrants disappeared and no raids were carried out.
In the end, it didn’t matter, though.
Once David’s article hit the streets, all hell broke loose and it wasn’t long before a Royal Commission was announced.
A liberal application of the name Skull Murphy
In the fallout Brian was worried that the Painters and Dockers would kill David. He may have been smart, but at the same time, he did dumb things like get himself cornered at a pub where Painters and Dockers drank.
Which was what happened.
One night, David rang Brian from a pub where he was drinking with another copper, and explained in his toffy voice that they were cornered. His car had been blocked in the car park by cars belonging to unionists.
‘I’ll be there in five minutes,’ Brian told him. ‘Sit tight.’
EXTRACT: HOW POLICE CAUGHT THE BALI BOMBER
Brian wrapped a shotgun in newspaper and grabbed a couple of pistols. Outside the pub, he could see the Painters and Dockers by David’s car.
Brian walked in and surreptitiously handed over a weapon to the cop David was with. He then slowly unwrapped the sawn-off shot gun to the wide-eyed interest of the crowd. He said in a loud voice: ‘if the gentlemen who have hemmed in these gentlemen’s cars go out and move them now, there won’t be any trouble.’
Half a dozen men scrambled out of the joint.
The cop checked outside minutes later, and all the cars were gone.
There were a lot of heart palpitations going on at the table in the wake of the mass exodus which gave Brian quite an appetite.
Luckily everyone else at the table had lost theirs and he was able to enjoy a couple of lovely desserts for his trouble.
For all the threats he received, David Richards was left unscathed. If he was ever challenged or cornered, he liberally applied Skull Murphy’s name to the conversation which kept things in check.
The Royal Commission investigating the corruption within the Federated Ship Painters and Dockers Union, marked the beginning of the end. The Commission attributed 15 murders and 23 attempted murders to the union power struggles.
Billy Longley regarded that as conservative; he estimated there were between thirty or forty killed. Pat Shannon’s assertion in 1972 that ‘no stray bullet or bomb has harmed a non-Union member’, did not remain true when in April the following year, a 10-year-old boy was caught in the crossfire of a union hit at the Moonee Valley Hotel. Despite the death and mayhem they left behind, few Painters and Dockers were convicted.
No one mourned the union’s demise.
This is an edited extract from Once a Copper: The Life and Times of Brian ‘The Skull’ Murphy by Vikki Petraitis. Published by Wild Dingo Press, March 2018, available now at www.wilddingopress.com.au, RRP $29.95.