Shot officer’s dying words at heart of probe
In 2015, former cop Glenn Pullin revealed a dark secret he had been carrying about the Rodney Miller and Gary Silk murders. Now his confession will be central to February’s public hearings by the Independent Broad-based Anti-Corruption Commission.
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Former cop Glenn Pullin had carried the burden of a dark secret for too long.
He was among the first to find and comfort the dying Rodney Miller, shot just after midnight on August 16, 1998, in Cochranes Rd, Moorabbin.
Senior Constable Miller had been on a stakeout with Sergeant Gary Silk to find two armed robbers. They pulled over a car that suspiciously entered and left the car park of the Silky Emperor Restaurant. Sgt Silk was killed instantly.
IBAC TO HOLD HEARINGS INTO SILK MILLER CASE
DOUBT ON SENIOR CONSTABLE’S DYING WORDS
ROBERTS NOT THERE, IDDLES CONCLUDES
For Pullin, comforting a dying man, and later that morning bursting through a door he thought the gunman may have been hiding behind, has forever affected his mental health. He had long been out of the force when he unburdened himself of a secret he had told few, if any, since that fateful day.
In 2015, in a phone call to veteran detective and new police union boss Ron Iddles, Pullin came clean about his statements about what he had heard a dying Miller say. He admitted his second statement was the only one in the brief of evidence. The original did not effectively exist.
Only a few members of Victoria Police knew there were two statements.
His confession — that he had been part of a conspiracy to add to his statement pivotal words he said were the dying words of Miller — will be central to February’s public hearings by the Independent Broad-based Anti-Corruption Commission.
A series of statements taken, and presented, by the Silk-Miller investigators have already been the focus of a year-long investigation.
But Pullin’s confession was followed by his equally stunning backflip on it, and a breathtakingly fumbled police corruption probe, in 2015.
A Herald Sun investigation not only uncovered the buried original Pullin statement, it substantiated his confession.
The unearthed doctored statement also set in motion another bid for freedom by one of the men convicted of the murders, Jason Roberts.
Its emergence resulted in Roberts, whose petition for mercy was denied in controversial circumstances months earlier, getting his case back to court. The genesis of this dates to a 2012 meeting between the then Director of Public Prosecutions John Champion, also attended by Iddles.
After the meeting, Iddles was tasked by Victoria Police to review Roberts’s conviction and several other claims he had made.
The following year, in an extensive report, Iddles found that on the basis of probability Roberts had not been at the Silk-Miller murder scene.
During Iddles’ review, investigators used parking tickets to find Robert’s ex-girlfriend, Nicole Debs, daughter of his co-accused Bandali Debs. She was asked where Roberts was when the Silk-Miller murders occurred.
In a taped police interview, she said he was at home with her, in bed, sleeping.
Ms Debs, who had not seen Roberts for seven years, had supported an alibi given by Roberts months earlier.
This caused upheaval within police ranks. Iddles has since been investigated, and cleared, by the police force for his conduct over the review.
Now the whole force, not just those in the Silk-Miller investigation are in the crosshairs of IBAC.
Police and their fairness in taking statements and disclosing “relevant’’ material will be probed in public hearings by Commissioner Robert Redlich and counsel assisting.
The next hearing in the Roberts case is in the Supreme Court on Friday.
Debs, a cold-blooded killer, was always going to be convicted of the heinous crime. Placing Roberts at the scene was a more difficult task. And Pullin was an important link in establishing that.
Now, only questions remain: what were Miller’s dying words?
And how high up in the force did knowledge of the doctored statement about his last words go?