Police pledged lesser charge for Jason Roberts’ evidence in Silk-Miller shootings
Detectives who investigated the 1998 Silk-Miller police shootings made suspect Jason Roberts multiple offers of a deal before charging him with the double murder.
Case Files
Don't miss out on the headlines from Case Files. Followed categories will be added to My News.
Detectives who investigated the 1998 Silk-Miller police shootings made suspect Jason Roberts multiple offers of a deal before charging him with the double murder.
Senior officers in the Lorimer taskforce have confirmed that offers were made to Roberts, including one that he would be charged with the lesser crime of being an accessory to murder if he “rolled’’ on primary suspect Bandali Debs.
The revelation confirms Roberts’s own evidence in an affidavit sworn in June 2016.
SHOT OFFICER’S DYING WORDS AT HEART OF PROBE
IBAC TO QUIZ COPS OVER SILK-MILLER STATEMENTS
POLICE BID TO JOIN ROBERTS’ COURT HEARING
Criminal law specialists say the making of such an offer to a suspect would be unprecedented if investigators were certain he was involved in executing two police officers.
Roberts and Debs are serving life sentences after a jury found them guilty of the murders of Sergeant Gary Silk and Senior Constable Rodney Miller in Cochranes Rd, Moorabbin, on August 16, 1998.
Roberts has petitioned for mercy, and a Herald Sun investigation that found a doctored police statement buried for 19 years prompted the government to review it, and refer his case to the Supreme Court to examine the credibility of new alibi evidence.
And the Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission, which is investigating statements taken in the case, this month announced it would hold public hearings into police practices, including the taking of witness statements, the preparation of evidence and whether relevant information was properly disclosed at the trial.
Earlier this month, it was revealed that Roberts asserts he was brutally assaulted in the back of an unmarked police van, hours before Lorimer investigators arrested, and then released him, on July 25, 2000.
He said he was partly stripped and beaten with guns.
Police bugs recorded Roberts telling his mother on August 5: “If I was guilty I would have told them in the van. I thought I was gonna die.”
The assault allegations were known to some members of the Lorimer taskforce.
The police force has only recently obtained an affidavit in which Roberts details his assault allegations.
In it, he claims: “I was taken, from a building site where I was working, by members of the Special Operations Group, thrown into the back of a van, cable-tied and beaten.’’
Roberts was arrested again on August 15, 2000, and charged with the murders.
Roberts has claimed that while he was in custody, police told him he should make a statement against Debs.
CONVICTED COP KILLER KEEN TO TESTIFY IN COURT
BANDALI DEBS CLAIMS HE WAS LONE GUNMAN IN MURDERS
ROBERTS WAS ‘NOT THERE’, IDDLES CONCLUDES
“They told me that I would be prosecuted as an accessory after the fact, and I would get a light sentence if I assisted in the prosecution of Ben,’’ Roberts has alleged.
After Roberts was charged with the murders, and was in custody in the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court cells, another attempt was made to obtain his co-operation.
Multiple sources, including Lorimer taskforce detectives, have confirmed that offers were made to Roberts right up until the trial.
The last offer was one of a reduced sentence, in return for him turning Crown witness.
In a statement made in 2013, Roberts said: “I was offered many deals by the police, they wanted me to plead to an accessory, and give evidence against Ben (Bandali Debs).
“I was told by police they knew I had not been involved in the shooting of Silk and Miller, but they knew I knew something.’’
It is understood Debs’s daughter, Nicole Debs, who was then Roberts’ fiancee, was also told that Roberts would be able to return home to her if he co-operated with police.
Ms Debs, who was interviewed by police during a re-examination of Roberts’s conviction in 2013, has given him an alibi — evidence that will be tested in a Supreme Court hearing next year.
The deals offered to Roberts were alluded to in a book by former Lorimer taskforce detective Joe D’Alo.
In one police interview, on the topic of his whereabouts at the time of the police murders, Roberts said: “I can’t speak for him (Debs), but I wasn’t (there).
“I had nothing to do with it, I weren’t even there.’’
A Victoria Police spokesman said on Wednesday: “Victoria Police stands by the investigation conducted by Taskforce Lorimer and maintains confidence in the convictions it achieved.”
How a hitman hid in plain sight
SOME knew him as The Fox, The Duke, even Uncle. But all knew Rod Collins for what he was: a killer. Is it really possible he got away with seven murders?
‘We still hope and believe she’s alive’
IT’S five years since Siriyakorn “Bung’’ Siriboon left her Boronia home to walk to school, vanishing without a trace. But her family say they will never give up hope.