Bravery award winner Darren Topham breaks his silence on his clash with Lewis Caine — a criminal later shot dead in Melbourne’s gangland war
AS pro golfer Darren Topham charged to rescue a man being kicked on a city street, little did he know he was taking on a future target in Melbourne’s gangland war.
True Crime Scene
Don't miss out on the headlines from True Crime Scene. Followed categories will be added to My News.
A FORMER professional golfer who won a bravery award for trying to stop a future gangland player from kicking a man to death in the city has spoken of the incident for the first time.
On the 10th anniversary of the death of underworld identity Lewis Caine, hero citizen Darren Topham has recalled how he literally rubbed shoulders with Caine some 15 years before Caine injected himself into Melbourne’s gangland war.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
COMING from a professional golfer it was a good hip and shoulder.
Running to the aid of a man being kicked mercilessly in the head on a Spencer St footpath, Mr Topham charged the assailant.
A pro golfer back then, Mr Topham was not familiar with violent confrontations on a football field — but to this day he likens his mercy charge to “a Dermott Brereton shirtfront”.
“I tucked the elbow in and sort of ran through the guy who was doing the kicking,” Mr Topham this week told the Herald Sun of his confrontation with Caine, a man who would go on to become an underworld player and one of the many victims of Melbourne’s gangland war.
The year was 1988, the time was about 2.30am on a September Sunday morning and Mr Topham, aged 24 at the time, had been trying to hail a taxi.
He heard Caine and the soon-to-be victim, a man named David Templeton, arguing on the other side of the city street.
“I heard a bit of yelling and I heard an almighty slap,” Mr Topham recalled.
“I looked across the road and one guy was lying motionless on the ground and another guy was standing over him just booting him in the head as hard as he could. My natural instincts were to help so I just ran across the road.
“The man doing the kicking, the perpetrator, didn’t see me coming and I blindsided him. I described it in court like hitting him with a Dermott Brereton shirtfront.”
Caine, aged in his early 20s, and Mr Topham fell to the ground.
Mr Topham rose first, and realised the bashed man was “in a lot of trouble”.
“The guy on the ground was a mess — he had a big blood clot coming out of his nose and was blowing blood bubbles out of his mouth. It was a pretty horrific scene.”
As Caine got to his feet, he seethed at Mr Topham.
“He said, ‘What would you do if he was trying to steal your girlfriend?’” Mr Topham told the Herald Sun.
Caine ran off and returned to the nightclub, where he would boast to one of the bouncers.
“He had blood on his hand,” that bouncer would later tell the Supreme Court.
“He was saying the guy got it and not to f--- with the Wing Chun boys. He said he got the guy that ‘was trying to get my girl.’”
Mr Topham ran into the path of a taxi on Spencer St and stopped the driver, who called an ambulance.
Paramedics and police arrived within minutes.
While giving a statement back at the City West police station, Mr Topham was informed the victim had died.
“I thought, ‘S---, this is serious,’” Mr Topham recalled.
“One minute I was waiting for a taxi and the next minute I was in the middle of something serious.”
LEWIS Caine, aka Sean Vincent, was born in Tasmania and left school after Year 10.
After a short stint in the army, where he completed basic training, he worked as a motorbike courier around Melbourne for about two years.
He also did a few Wing Chun karate lessons.
In court he was described as a bit of a loner.
The night he was to bash Mr Templeton to death started at Lazar’s Nightclub in King St, where he met up with a woman he’d met only the day before.
Sparks had apparently flown between the two and they were keen to hook up that evening.
During the night, Caine became separated from the woman after he was kicked out of the nightclub.
Mr Templeton, pretending to be a police officer, had asked the bouncers to kick Caine out of the club because he was drunk and threatening to cause trouble.
An infuriated Caine waited outside for Mr Templeton to leave and, after following him in a taxi, launched his brutal attack.
A witness said of the attack: “After the first blow to the face … the victim just fell to the ground. He was motionless. After Caine had hit him four times, he moved to the right side of his body and kicked him twice in the head.”
After police arrested Caine, he tried to destroy incriminating evidence by attempting to lick Mr Templeton’s blood from his knuckles.
Back at the St Kilda Rd police complex, Caine told one of the arresting officers: “Do you think I’m going to have a go? See that Adam’s apple there hanging out above your tie? I could crush it with one hit and I could cut off the air.
“You know what it’s like — once you start hitting you see red. You just can’t stop.”
Caine was found guilty of murder, won an appeal, and was found guilty of the same charge at retrial.
According to a forensic psychologist’s report, Caine harboured a personality that responded “angrily and violently to insults which an ordinary person was capable of handling without violence”.
Justice Frank Vincent sentenced him to 15 years’ jail with a 10-year minimum term.
“You beat and kicked (Mr Templeton) mercilessly and thereby caused his death,” Justice Vincent told Caine.
“The number and nature of the injuries which resulted from your attack speak eloquently of the ferocity with which it was carried out … You pursued your victim with determination, beat him savagely and then returned to the nightclub where you boasted about what you had done.”
For his effort to try and save Mr Templeton, Darren Topham received a prestigious bravery award.
It was presented to him at a state reception.
Mr Templeton’s parents introduced themselves to Mr Topham after the ceremony.
“It was a big deal for me,” Mr Topham said of the ceremony and the award.
“David’s parents came and spoke to me. They wanted to know if he said anything before he died. And they just wanted to thank me very much for trying to help.”
A proud Mr Topham moved on with his life.
During his sentence, Caine managed to seduce a 20-year-old woman who visited Pentridge Prison to teach hairdressing.
“There was this chemistry (between us),” the woman told the Sunday Herald Sun in March 2005.
“I was bubbling on the inside and I got the shakes when he came near. We would look for an excuse to be alone together.”
She continued to visit Caine throughout his stretch.
He sent her love letters and photos of himself.
Caine longed to sail around exotic islands while drinking margaritas, the woman said.
“He was so vain … He was very easy on the eye, very attractive and he’d tell you what you wanted to hear.”
The woman was so infatuated she had “Lewis Forever” tattooed across her lower back.
She left her husband for Caine, only to realise he was a Lothario-style user of women.
“For Lewis, de facto meant a place to leave his bags,” she said.
AFTER his release from jail, Caine — aged in his late 30s — met a young glamorous defence lawyer named Zarah Garde-Wilson at a law office.
Ms Garde-Wilson was an up-and-comer in her profession.
Renowned for her tight outfits, her dress sense was once described as having one button too many undone.
Passion erupted between her and Caine, and the two became lovers.
Very soon they were living together in an inner-city apartment as de facto partners.
The couple’s relationship raised many eyebrows, in legal and criminal circles.
Mark “Chopper” Read would tell the Herald Sun: “I don’t know what she saw in him. I’ve had a shower with Lewis Caine (in Pentridge Prison’s H Division) and I didn’t get the same impression. I didn’t think he looked that much.
“He didn’t catch my eye.”
Caine was a regular drinker at former Carlton footballer David Rhys-Jones’ pub — The Plough and Harrow.
Rhys-Jones would tell a court Caine was “intimidating at times” and was nearly banned once for punching a university student for no apparent reason.
Caine was often drunk and threatened staff, including a pregnant woman.
“I had a bit of trouble with him,” a duty manager would say in court.
“He’s built like a brick toilet.”
Caine, a former Carlton Crew loyalist who’d switched to gangland heavyweight Carl Williams’ camp, had a grand plan to make some quick coin — he’d been floating his services to shoot dead Carlton Crew powerbroker Mario Condello.
On the night of May 8, 2004, Caine met and drank with two known criminals (who cannot be named for legal reasons) at The Plough and Harrow hotel.
“That drinking session had been arranged at a time, and in a context, when there was much publicity about a series of gangland killings,” Supreme Court judge Justice Bernard Teague would later explain.
“All three of you had close contacts in the camps that were seen to be engaged in a series of retributive shootings. All three of you had reasons to be guarded as to where the loyalties of other contacts lay and to be interested in gathering intelligence.”
According to the judge, Caine had chosen to “meddle in the gangland war” and had invited the other two to meddle as well.
Unfortunately for Caine, the other two preferred the Carlton Crew over Carl Williams.
Caine was shot in the face, just under the right eye, as he sat in the back of a 4WD that night.
One of the killers claimed Caine, then aged 39, pulled a gun first and it jammed, leaving him with no option but to shoot Caine in self-defence.
The other killer claimed he was vomiting outside the vehicle at the time of the shooting.
A jury believed otherwise.
Caine’s body was dumped in a dead-end street in Brunswick, possibly as a message to other potential underworld assassins.
The two killers drove back to their patch, changed their clothes and went nightclubbing.
DARREN Topham had forgotten Lewis Caine, until Caine’s photo hit the newspapers after his death.
Mr Topham said it was a shock to learn that the bloke he’d taken to the ground in Spencer St had become a player in Melbourne’s infamous gangland war.
“It hit me in the papers one day and I thought, ‘S---, that’s the guy from Spencer Street.’”
In her interview with GQ magazine in 2007, Ms Garde-Wilson said she talked to Caine in the spirit world with the help of clairvoyants.
And she confirmed she had a vial of his sperm on ice.
“He always felt he wouldn’t make it to 40,” Ms Garde-Wilson told GQ.
“It was just a feeling he had. He always said, ‘You’re the only woman who I want to bear my kids. If anything happens to me, they’re there if you want them.”
When the first Underbelly TV series hit screens in 2008, Mr Topham had flashbacks about the Spencer St incident — as the Lewis Caine character featured prominently in that series.
“It was extremely surreal,” Mr Topham said.
“It gave me a jolt.”
Much like a good football shirtfront.
How this teen became a savage killer
An evil lives within killer Jamie Lee Dolheguy, but was it always there or did it manifest from the years of abuse and neglect that marred her childhood.
Overland’s stunning concession in Lawyer X Royal Commission
Former police chief Simon Overland has been grilled by the Royal Commission into the Lawyer X scandal, and revealed how he kept the use of Nicola Gobbo from the state’s top prosecutors.