Sam Newman feared ‘a bullet’ at the hands of hitmen sent by ‘Mr Death’ to attack Fred Cook
SAM Newman has told of the scariest day of his life saving mate Fred Cook from the hands of underworld hit men. READ: Strife and times of Fred Cook
True Crime Scene
Don't miss out on the headlines from True Crime Scene. Followed categories will be added to My News.
SAM Newman has opened up about the scariest day of his life when he saved his mate Fred Cook from possible death at the hands of underworld hit men.
Newman recalls the moment he intervened to save Cook, the VFA and VFL legend, after three men sent by feared criminal Dennis Allen had set upon him at the Station Hotel in Port Melbourne, beating him senseless.
He touches on the story in the new book, Fabulous Fred: The Strife and Times of Fred Cook, written by Paul Amy.
EXCLUSIVE EXTRACT: Read from Paul Amy’s book now
TV SHOCK: Newman says Footy Show flash ‘not my fault’
COMMENT: Stop the huffing and puffing, Sam is funny
“I walked in and there were some notorious figures sitting around with a handgun on a table and I asked where Fred was and they motioned upstairs,’’ Newman told the Sunday Herald Sun.
“They said don’t get involved. Fred was all bloodied and he wasn’t very well — they had beaten him up pretty good. He didn’t want an ambulance, he wanted to stay there on his own and as I walked out I said ‘you’re strong, brave men’ thinking as I walked off I was going to get a bullet in the back of my head.
“I got in my car and drove off as calmly as I thought I could and as I turned the corner I thought my heart was going to explode out of my chest.”
Newman, who has also written the foreword to the book, says it happened in the mid 80s after Allen suspected that Cook was a police informer.
“It was reality TV 20 years before its time,’’ Newman said. “You couldn’t get tension and drama and anxiety like it. To this day I don’t know what it was over, no point asking the bleeding obvious, but it was an instinctive thing you do. You’d have to think more about not doing it.”
Newman said it was an interesting time when certain people held no fear.
“There was that plank where extortion, drugs and money ruled and it’s a pretty scary time when people don’t care about the consequences and don’t have a fear about what happens to them,’’ he said.
“Most of us wouldn’t entertain having a gun, but to them it’s a badge of honour. In some sections it still exists today.”
INSIDER SPEAKS: The callous slayings by Dennis Allen
THE BLACK LIST: Peirce, Allen on Anderson’s roll call
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.