Star witness a fatal flaw in vampire gigolo murder trial
IT was a murder Victorian police had been desperate to solve for a decade but as PADRAIC MURPHY reports, the notorious vampire gigolo case seemed cursed from the start | Juror threatened by text
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THE star witness in the vampire gigolo murder case also proved to be the stake through its heart.
He was the fatal flaw in the prosecution of a case Victorian police had been desperate to solve for a decade but which seemed cursed from the start.
Male prostitute Shane Chartres-Abbott claimed he was older than the city of Melbourne.
In fact he was just 27 years old when he was gunned down as he left his Reservoir home in 2003, bound for the County Court where he was on trial for the rape and mutilation of a female client.
THREATENING TEXT: Juror received warning text during trial
Despite a $1m reward, a global manhunt and a dedicated police taskforce, nobody but the hired hitman will spend a day in prison for a murder described as an attack at the heart of state’s justice system.
A Supreme Court jury heard from cold-blooded killers, former footballers and ex-strippers, telling tales of police corruption and the underworld’s definition of justice.
The case also nearly fell over — twice — during the trial.
First when the hitman got cold feet and again on the eve of jury deliberations when the foreperson received a threatening text on her phone.
The message read: “Anyway, Evang G and friends say hi … They will come to visit for a private party.”
The court heard the text had been sent from a payphone — most likely by a disgruntled former partner.
While there was no evidence of the man having any connection with Goussis, he had served jail time and the judge noted concerns
The matter is now being investigated with Justice Lex Lasry saying the “extremely serious” matter could end in contempt charges.
The case continued in the juror’s absence and after three days of deliberation the jury acquitted the three men charged over the murder.
Mark Adrian Perry — who vanished for six years and was found living in Western Australia under the name “Lee” — was accused of ordering the death as revenge for the rape of the female client, who happened to be his former girlfriend.
His childhood friend Warren Shea — who lived interstate — was accused of acting as middleman to recruit the killer.
And underworld figure Evangelos Goussis was accused of acting as getaway driver and helping plan the shooting.
The defence had argued the gunman was a treacherous con man with a shocking criminal history, protected and mollycoddled by authorities in exchange for his evidence.
He had been given what Justice Lex Lasry described in legal argument as “an extremely generous discount” for the Chartres-Abbott murder, and given the protection of very wideranging suppression orders.
Throughout his evidence he was combative, feigned offence, changed his story, abused barristers, slagged the media and claimed his heavy drinking left him with a hazy memory whenever he was cornered.
For the first few days he was due to give evidence, he claimed to be sick.
When he was well enough to reappear, he threatened to withdraw, prompting prosecutor Andrew Tinney, SC, to make an 11th hour bid to convince him to continue.
When he finally decided to turn up again, he wanted the court closed to the media and public and for it to continue in secret.
He introduced new claims he had never raised before, including that he had carried out the murder in the expectation he would get a “favour for a favour in return”.
The favour was said be have been that he wanted Sydney underworld figure Dr Nick Paltos call off some bikies who were chasing him for a debt.
It was a story the jury never heard, but perhaps a much more believable tale than the one the hitman had pedalled.
That he had carried out the murder for free because he was so disgusted by Chartres-Abbott’s attack on Mr Perry’s former girlfriend he had “deserved to go”.
“He was an animal,” the hitman allegedly said.
“I consider it a favour.”
While the hit man’s evidence left much to be desired he flourished with the theatre of the courtroom.
He called Perry’s barrister Michael Tovey “a pompous man” and complained he was “droning on”; he scrapped with Shea’s barrister Michael O’Connell, and claimed Goussis’s barrister Jane Dixon was deliberately confusing him.
The gunman claimed he knew truckloads of corrupt police, and implicated former policemen David Waters and Peter Lalor in the Chartres-Abbott murder.
He told the jury they provided him with Chartres-Abbott’s address at an inner city hotel.
A police information report read to the jury by Detective Peter Trichias, who interviewed the hit man, said he had referred to former drug squad detective Paul Dale and other officers during an interview in 2006.
“Concerned about getting members current/ex involved or implicated in the murder of Chartres-Abbott,” the report said.
“Mentioned the names of Dave Docket Waters, Glen Saunders, Peter Alexander, Steve Campbell, Paul Dale. Waters, Saunders, Alexander and Dale are all ex-police members.”
In the face of restrictive suppression order, little can be said of the gunman’s past.
He has a shocking criminal history and has spent decades in and out of jail.
Bizarrely, he claimed to have worked closely with police running personal development courses, and claimed to count lawyers and politicians among his circle of friends.
Former Calton great David Rhys-Jones was called to give evidence during the trial, detailing his dealings with the gunman in the early 2000s.
He said he would often see the gunman drinking with Goussis: “It was not regular ... it was just on the odd occasions.”
Rhys-Jones said the gunman was “pretty quiet”.
The trial itself touched on some of the most shocking crimes in the state’s history: the shooting of bank robber Graeme Jensen; the murders of police officers Tynan and Eyre; the prison bashing death of gangland boss Carl Williams, and the infamous Painters and Dockers war.
While the hit man’s character suffered from all the jury learned of his background, one accused benefited from the protection a trial offers.
Goussis is serving 33 years in jail for the gangland slayings of Lewis Moran and Lewis Caine.
He ambushed Moran in a Brunswick pub and shot him dead in March 2004. Caine’s body was found dumped in a laneway in May of the same year.
He was escorted in handcuffs from a prison van each day — and on the first day of the trial heavily armed police were seen outside the court.
Perhaps the other flaw of the trial was the victim himself.
Chartres-Abbott was an unlovely victim whose brutal rape and torture of a client was unlikely to have garnered him much sympathy.
But the jury was also never told of his own shocking upbringing in
northern NSW through a collection of busted hippie communes that had
degenerated in to little more than camps for sexual predators.
Chartres-Abbott moved to Melbourne after being run out of Coffs Harbour for prostitution offences, hiring himself to both male and female clients from a Doncaster agency.
When he met his victim he told her he was not the then 27-year-old he appeared to be.
The court heard he said he was “in fact very old, older than the City of Melbourne itself.
“He was, so he claimed, a vampire and he used to drink blood
to stay alive. He was now, however … living in the real world and no longer drinking blood but eating normal food like the rest of us.”
Mr Tinney urged the jurors to see Chartres-Abbott as any other human being.
He told the jury the murder was: “serious indictment on obviously the person or
persons who decided that vigilante justice of that type is an acceptable measure in the streets of Melbourne.
“That’s not the way our world is meant to work. This crime should be viewed as being absolutely abhorrent to all of us. No matter what you think or we think about Shane
Chartres-Abbott.”
In the end though it wasn’t what the jury thought of Chartres-Abbott that mattered.
Their verdict shows what they thought of the prosecution’s star witness — and they weren’t impressed.
AUGUST 2002: Mark Adrian Perry’s former girlfriend is raped and part of her tongue bitten off at the Saville Hotel during sex with self-proclaimed vampire gigolo Shane Chartres-Abbott
LATE 2002/EARLY 2003: Underworld figures allegedly approached to find someone to kill Chartres-Abbott
JUNE 4, 2003: Chartres-Abbott is shot dead after two hitmen allegedly approach him outside his Reservoir home. He was heading to court with his pregnant girlfriend and father to face his trial
SEPTEMBER 2007: Perry flees after becoming aware police want to speak to him about Chartres-Abbott’s killing. Police speculate he has roamed the nation under an assumed name and possibly in disguise
NOVEMBER 2007: Allegations of police involvement in the killing of Chartres-Abbott surface after the shooter gives information to police
MARCH 2008: The shooter pleads guilty to Chartres-Abbott’s murder
OCTOBER 2009: $1 million reward offered for information leading to Perry’s arrest
AUGUST 2012: Police charge Warren Shea and Evangelos Goussis with Chartres-Abbott’s murder
JULY 2, 2013: Perry is arrested for extradition to Melbourne at his workplace in Morley, WA, and charged with murder.
JULY 2014: Jury returns verdict of not guilty.
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