Infamous Richmond road gang robbery ‘confession’ caught on a wire
A secret witness has cried while telling a court why she helped the police and wore a wire to help nab the alleged mastermind behind the 1994 Richmond road gang robbery.
Law & Order
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A secret witness has sobbed as she told a court how she wore a wire to help nab the alleged mastermind behind one of Melbourne’s most infamous armed robberies.
The court heard the witness, whose identity was suppressed, covertly recorded conversations with Pasquale “Percy” Lanciana 20 years after he was accused of orchestrating the Richmond road gang robbery in June 1994.
Lanciana, 61, sat stone-faced as the woman cried that she just wanted to be free from the lie while explaining her decision to help police.
He has pleaded not guilty to the heist, in which five men posed as road workers to block an Armaguard van carrying $2.3 million in cash from the Reserve Bank.
During four gruelling days in the witness box, the female associate told of her fear of being caught by police after Mr Lanciana forced her to exchange the stolen cash for “clean” bills at the National Australia Bank just months after the crime.
The witness told the court she did not know the money was from the robbery, and it wasn’t until the next year that Mr Lanciana revealed where it came from.
The conversation, outside a La Porchetta restaurant in Williamstown in 1995, was sparked after Lanciana told the woman her photo — taken by security cameras at the bank — had been released to the media, identified as a person of interest in laundering money linked to the robbery.
Two decades later, investigators raided her home and told her the situation would get worse if she did not co-operate.
“You have a choice. You can either look after yourself, or stay on the path you’re on,” detectives told her in 2014.
“I knew it was me (in the photo). I knew I did the wrong thing. I was petrified,” the witness told the County Court this week. “I actually just wanted to be free. I couldn’t lie anymore, it was so hard.”
She told police that during the La Porchetta conversation, Mr Lanciana “definitely told me they had done the robbery” and she agreed to wear a secret listening device to elicit this confession for investigators.
Over five separate meetings between July and September 2014, the witness met and recorded her conversations with Mr Lanciana, including on July 14, when he can be heard telling her the robbery crew wore gloves during the heist.
In a recorded conversation at Chadstone shopping centre two weeks later, Mr Lanciana can be heard denying being at the robbery, saying: “I didn’t do it, I just organised it.”
Prosecutors say this admission was enough to find Mr Lanciana guilty of the crime — whether he actively took part or simply organised it.
Defence barrister Mark Gumbleton challenged the witness’s story that Mr Lanciana told her he was involved.
“You thought he was involved because he gave you the money, put you in harm’s way, and the media was saying the money was from the armed robbery,” Dr Gumbleton said.
“As it turns out, he did not confess to you. Rather he denied he committed the armed robbery,” he said.
The trial, before Judge Michael O’Connell is expected to last up to five weeks, with prosecutors to call detectives from the 1994 investigation and current officers.