Serial killer Alex Tsakmakis suspected of cold case Manchester Unity triple execution murder
A SERIAL killer is the prime suspect in the 1978 execution style slaying of three Melbourne jewellers.
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IT'S not every day an officer fresh out of the police academy is directing traffic in the city one minute and finding three murdered bodies the next.
But that's what happened to Constable Paul Kemp 35 years ago this month.
Sadly, the triple murder he stumbled on has still not been solved - although detectives believe they know who shot the men and stole jewels worth at least $30,000.
Constable Kemp was on point duty at the intersection of Swanston and Collins Sts about 5.25pm on March 17, 1978, when Spiro Soultanadis and Bruce Mazzuchelli started frantically waving at him to come over to them.
Mr Soultanadis had just learned that jeweller Colin Opwald had looked through the letterbox of fellow jeweller Paul Pace's office and seen what he thought were bodies on the floor behind the locked door.
Constable Kemp abandoned his traffic directing duties and walked over to the clearly distressed Mr Soultanadis and Mr Mazzuchelli.
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We will never know what thoughts were going through the minds of the dead men as they lay helpless on the floor
“One of them said come with us there are two men on the floor of the Manchester Unity building,'' Constable Kemp said.
Constable Kemp followed the two men up to the locked two-room office of manufacturing jeweller Paul Pace.
After looking through the letterbox and seeing “the legs of a person who appeared to be laying face down on the floor'', Constable Kemp and an office worker used a wooden mallet and his police helmet to smash the glass on Mr Pace's door to get in.
What Constable Kemp discovered was not two, but three bodies spreadeagled face down on the floor of room 804 on the eighth floor of the Manchester Unity building.
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The bodies were of jewellers Paul Pace, 32, Keith Hyman, 32, and Robert Wartman, 33. Wartman and Pace had each been shot once in the back of the head and their bodies were in a back office, which was reached through a door leading from the front office.
Hyman had a towel stuffed into his mouth to gag him and had been shot twice, once in the back of his neck and once behind his right ear. His body was in the front office
“I walked straight to the rear room,'' Constable Kemp said.
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“I there saw the deceased, Pace and Wartman, face down lying stretched out on the floor with a pool of blood around their faces. Both of the men were lying side by side.
“I then turned to go back to the entrance door when someone said `there's another one over there', pointing to the first room.
“I then observed the third deceased, Hyman, lying on his stomach at the southern end of the first room. There was blood sprayed over the southern wall.''
Constable Kemp immediately sealed off room 804 in readiness for the arrival of the homicide squad.
The execution-style triple shooting happened on St Patrick's Day and became known as the Manchester Unity murders.
I think the gunman wanted to be sure of his work. Mr Hyman moved less than a metre, but he was shot again
That three jewellers could be shot dead on a Friday afternoon in a busy building in the centre of the CBD without anybody seeing or hearing anything surprised detectives, sent shockwaves through Melbourne and prompted the tight-knit community of jewellers to greatly increase their personal security and that of their expensive wares.
The best other workers in the Manchester Unity building could come up during questioning was hearing a few bangs about 2pm. None of them got off their backsides to investigate the noises as they presumed the bangs were from the extensive building work going on around them.
Hundreds of police swarmed through the city to hunt for the killer or killers immediately after the bodies were found.
Trams, trains and planes were stopped and searched as police mounted a massive manhunt.
Police demanded that air traffic controllers hold up all planes at Tullamarine, Essendon, Moorabbin and Avalon airports.
Every person in the Manchester Unity building - which was a rabbit warren of small and medium sized offices and businesses on the corner of Swanston and Collins Sts, including several jewellers - was questioned before being allowed to leave.
Swanston St was blocked to through traffic between Collins and Bourke Sts and police used loudspeakers to move on crowds of late night shoppers and commuters.
Drinkers in the Graham Hotel, close to the murder scene, had their St Patrick's Day celebrations interrupted when scores of armed police swooped on the hotel after receiving a report that a suspect for the shooting had entered the building. The raid came to nothing.
Homicide squad detective Noel Jubb said it appeared the gunman ordered all three men to lie face down on the floor with their arms outstretched, crucifix fashion, before executing them with a .22 rifle.
“We will never know what thoughts were going through the minds of the dead men as they lay helpless on the floor,'' Det-Chief-Inspector Jubb said.
“Perhaps they thought they would be left alive after the robbery, which was why they may have agreed to lie down.
“I think the gunman wanted to be sure of his work. Mr Hyman moved less than a metre, but he was shot again.''
There was nothing really to pin it on him as far as charging him went, there were no witnesses
Detectives believe it is possible the gunman had an accomplice as it would have been difficult for one person to shoot two men in one room and a third in another without one of the victims attempting to escape. All three men were face down in the same position when the bodies were found. Mr Hyman had been gagged, which would have been difficult for one man to do while holding a gun.
The lack of witnesses meant it took weeks of painstaking detective work to piece together what probably happened.
It appears the killer posed as a customer wanting to buy diamonds.
Paul Pace's wife Rhonda told an inquest into her husband's death he had come home a few days before being killed and told her he had a big diamond deal going.
Police discovered the man who claimed he wanted to buy diamonds first approached Mr Pace in his office about a deal on February 10, 1978, more than a month before the murders.
In view of Pace's occupation as a manufacturing jeweller, he was not in a position to supply the diamonds from personal stock, so he contacted Keith Hyman, who managed the C.J Fajnkind wholesale jewellery business in Collins St.
The director of the company, Wolf Fajnkind, told police Mr Hyman had discussed the proposed diamond deal with him and that Mr Hyman took eight diamonds, worth $31,000, to Mr Pace's office on either February 13 or 14 so the prospective buyer could view them.
“However, the deal was not finalised because Keith Hyman was not prepared to accept a personal cheque for payment. He was only prepared to accept a bank cheque or cash,'' Mr Fajnkind said.
He said Mr Pace had contacted Mr Hyman again during the second week in March and said the deal was back on. Mr Hyman agreed to bring the eight cut diamonds, ranging from 1 to 1.3 carats, back to Mr Pace's office at 2pm on Friday, March 17, 1978, with Mr Pace saying the buyer would be there to buy the diamonds.
Mr Fajnkind became concerned when Mr Hyman had not returned to work by late afternoon and he and Manchester Unity building jeweller Colin Opwald went to Mr Pace's office about 4.30pm and found the lights were out and the door was locked with a “Closed Till Monday'' sign on it.
When there was still no sign of Mr Hyman - whose wife Lynda was pregnant with their first child when he was murdered - at 5.15pm, Mr Opwald peered through Mr Pace's letterbox.
“I saw a male person whom I recognised as Keith lying on the floor of the office. I also noticed an amount of blood on the wall above where Keith was lying. He appeared to be motionless,'' Mr Opwald said.
Constable Kemp arrived minutes later and the homicide squad soon after.
It was just through a tragic coincidence that Mr Wartman arrived at Mr Pace's office just after 2.15pm that day.
He either walked in just prior to Mr Pace and Mr Hyman being shot or just after. Either way his fate was sealed as, having seen the gunman, he had to be killed to avoid being able to identify the shooter and jewellery thief.
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Mr Wartman, married with two young sons, worked in a city jewellery manufacturing business with his father, former Melbourne premiership player Ray Wartman.
Homicide squad detective Stephen Cody told the inquest Mr Wartman was only there to pick up a cheap set of earrings he had previously left with Mr Pace to be repaired.
Coroner Kevin Mason found the men were murdered by “a person or persons unknown'' and that the motive had been the theft of diamonds worth about $30,000.
“It seems a paltry gain to cost the lives of three men,'' Mr Mason said.
Retired Victoria Police deputy commissioner Paul Delianis this week said he was confident underworld heavy Alex Tsakmakis committed the Manchester Unity murders.
He took over as head of the homicide squad a few weeks after the triple killing.
“My own view, although we never charged anyone with the offence, is that it was committed by Tsakmakis,'' Mr Delianis said.
“There was nothing really to pin it on him as far as charging him went, there were no witnesses.
“But I am quite satisfied in my own mind, having looked at all the evidence, all the information that we received and his modus operandi, that Tsakmakis is the one.''
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Mr Delianis said Tsakmakis was also suspected of the shooting murder of prostitute Margaret Clayton at a North Fitzroy massage parlour in June 1979 and the wounding that same month of Ivy and George Kartsounis at their Hawthorn Tattslotto agency.
Tsakmakis was on bail for the 1978 murder of professional runner Bruce Lindsay Walker when he robbed Mr and Mrs Kartsounis to get money to fund his upcoming murder trial. He made the couple lie on the floor before he shot them both in the head, just as Mr Delianis believes he did to the three Manchester Unity jewellers.
Miraculously, Mr and Mrs Kartsounis survived.
“Tsakmakis always got his victims to lie on the floor and then he shot them in the head,'' Mr Delianis said.
“He did that in the Manchester Unity building, he did that in the Hawthorn Tattslotto agency.
“He also killed the prostitute Margaret Clayton, where he also got her to lie on the ground and then he shot her in the head and killed her.
“While I don't have positive proof I am, within my soul, absolutely convinced that Tsakmakis is the culprit in the Manchester Unity case.
“I base that on his modus operandi as well as all the information we received.
“He wasn't the type who would talk to us and as there were no witnesses to the Manchester Unity murders, not one solitary witness, we were never able to charge him.''
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The killing didn't stop when Tsakmakis was jailed over the Walker murder.
In July 1984, Tsakmakis committed an act of such violence it sickened even the most hardened of prison officers.
Convicted double murderer Barry Robert Quinn, himself one of the toughest criminals in Pentridge prison, made the mistake of taunting Tsakmakis about an incident in which a girlfriend of Tsakmakis had been raped.
Tsakmakis did nothing that day, but struck at the first opportunity.
The pair were left alone in the prison carpentry shop. Tsakmakis poured glue over Quinn and started flicking matches at him. Not ordinary matches, but `match bombs' fashioned by strapping several matches together.
Quinn burst into flames and died in agony hours later, having suffered 85 per cent burns to his body.
Somebody with a black sense of humour, possibly a detective amused by the gluing of Quinn, inserted a death notice in The Sun newspaper.
It read: “Barry, we always stuck together - Alex.''
Tsakmakis himself ended up being murdered in Pentridge in 1988 at the age of 41.
Russell St bomber Craig Minogue beat him in the head with a pillowcase full of gym weights and repeatedly stabbed him for good measure.
Tsakmakis's injuries were so severe that when homicide squad officers were first told of the attack they were told Tsakmakis was dead.
It wasn't until they got to Pentridge that they discovered he had been revived by a prison doctor who had detected the faintest of pulses.
Tsakmakis never regained consciousness after the attack and died on August 1, 1988, after doctors, who had concluded he was brain-dead, turned off his life-support unit.
Prison officer Jennifer Holschier described the attack when giving evidence at the Tsakmakis inquest in 1989.
The inquest was told Tsakmakis was found lying face-down in a pool of blood with stab wounds to the chest and a “hole'' in the back of his head.
In a statement read to the court, Ms Holschier said she saw Minogue and another prisoner, Peter Anderson, acting suspiciously and that she saw Minogue putting something into a white bag between his feet.
She said Minogue was in the number one industrial yard with prisoners Anderson, Paul Larson, Peter Michael Reed, Peter Gibb and Joe Ditroia.
The court was told Tsakmakis walked into the yard with a tray of food for the prisoners about 11.30 am on July 26.
“I looked back and saw Minogue swing the white bag and strike him (Tsakmakis) on the head,'' Ms Holschier said.
“Tsakmakis picked up the tray to protect himself and there were a couple more swings.
“He (Minogue) was hitting him around the head with full force in a round arm action.''
Prison officer Mark Taylor told the inquest he had walked out of the exercise yard seconds before Tsakmakis was attacked and that the door to the yard was slammed shut behind him.
He said he had at first thought the prisoners were playing a joke on him and he tried to open the door. But the door had been held from the other side and he had been unable to get in until three other officers had joined him to force the door.
At the same time, Mr Taylor said he had heard another officer, who was patrolling the catwalk above the yard, call out that there was trouble.
By the time prison staff got in, Tsakmakis had stopped breathing and had no pulse, according to prison doctor Eugenie Tuck.
Dr Tuck said she had used a towel and her knee to stop heavy bleeding at the back of Tsakmakis's head and had then resuscitated him until ambulance officers had arrived and taken over.
Mr Delianis this week said few, if any, tears were shed as Tsakmakis was no great loss to society.
“He got his just deserts when Minogue whacked him over the head,'' he said.
