Andrew Rule: New book reveals awful truth of life rubbing shoulders with crooks
Reporter Adrian Tame had no idea who Kath Pettingill was when she called him up and launched into an expletive-riddled tirade. But the bizarre conversation kicked off an odd-couple relationship that has outlasted three of the crime matriarch’s sons.
Andrew Rule
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Adrian Tame was the “new boy” at the raunchy tabloid, Truth, when he took a call from a woman he had never heard of and would never forget.
That expletive-riddled conversation with Kath Pettingill started an odd-couple relationship that has outlasted three of the crime matriarch’s sons.
In a life spent walking the line between two worlds, Tame has known too many people on the wrong side of the law. But his enduring friendship with “Granny Evil” surprises people who ask how he could possibly stand by someone who has seen and done terrible things and raised such an awful family.
A fair question, Tame admits in his gritty new memoir The Awful Truth.
Of 10 children Pettingill pushed into the world, fathered by a string of men, the seven she raised herself fell into appalling lives of crime. Three who were adopted out have grown up to lead blameless lives.
Three of Kath’s sons have died ugly deaths. Jamie died from a drug overdose at 22, Dennis from drug-induced heart disease at 36, and Victor was executed in an underworld feud at 44.
Peter has spent more than half his life behind bars for crimes including rape, shooting at police and drug dealing. Victor and Trevor were charged and acquitted of murdering two innocent young policemen in the infamous Walsh Street case.
Vicki went into witness protection at 37 after giving evidence against two of her brothers in the Walsh Street trial. Kath has not seen her since 1991.
Their big brother Dennis “Mr Death” Allen was the Rasputin of Richmond in the 1980s. His murder tally was reputedly in double figures.
He once bombed a Coroner’s Court the night before an inquest into the death of one of his victims, and he tried to shoot down a police helicopter.
He got away with so much for so long because he bribed bent police and informed on other drug dealers, a service which “bought” him bail on a slew of serious charges.
Allen is infamous for cutting the legs off a former Hells Angel, Anton Kenny, to fit his body in a drum to dump in the Yarra. He once plotted to kill former Easybeats lead singer Stevie Wright over drug debts — but was talked out of it by legendary VFA full forward Fred Cook.
Allen introduced Cook to using “speed”, ultimately wrecking his life.
Allen was so crazed he once flew to Darwin to buy a crocodile to put in his backyard to discourage police raids. But getting a big croc back to Victoria was beyond even a man who pulled in $70,000 a week in drug money and paid bent cops $1000 a day.
Tame didn’t judge Kath by her sons, especially the maddest and baddest of them. But he was shocked at her admission she scolded Dennis for burning a vacuum cleaner after using it to clean up blood, skull fragments and brains after he murdered a “friend” in one of the many houses he owned in Richmond.
She combined the domestic with the demonic in a way that inspired the crime matriarch figure “Smurf” in the film Animal Kingdom, loosely based on her sons’ part in the revenge murder of two innocent young policemen at Walsh St, South Yarra, in 1988.
Tame sees in her a damaged and once dangerous woman with an unexpected streak of generosity and intelligence that might have blossomed into something better if she hadn’t been condemned from childhood to a cycle of violence and abuse.
He describes how “Kath” fought a much younger, bigger prisoner in jail to protect a “first timer”, a nurse who’d killed her abusive husband in self defence. He also describes how she put her spare glass eye in a cup of tea made for an undiplomatic prison officer who called her an “old moll”.
Tame, now retired in rural Victoria, still stays in touch with the battle-scarred great grandmother who has lived quietly near Venus Bay for decades.
He does not, by contrast, stay in touch with any surviving Hells Angels he associated with for three years while working on a film about the gang’s annual rock concert at Broadford, north of Melbourne.
Maverick filmmaker Barry Cross and Tame won grudging access to the gang in the late 1970s, a time when its members were hardened and violent but still Harley Davidson motorcycle enthusiasts at heart.
But while Tame and Cross were trying to film the Angels in their element, the club was already morphing into a vicious organised crime cell specialising in amphetamines.
Tame was at the gang’s fortified clubhouse in Fairfield when he saw a group of Angels “prospects” bash an Adelaide biker rash enough to wear his own club’s colours into their lair.
He was routinely threatened by gang members — then by police who (wrongly) accused him of trafficking “speed” for the Angels. No wonder he likens the filmmaking process to grinding private parts in a meat mincer, only slower.
Once filming ended, he stayed away. He did, however, maintain his regard for the Melbourne chapter’s foundation member, Chris “Ball Bearing” Coelho.
As the Angels took on amphetamines production after getting the recipe from the original Californian chapter, the police turned up the heat. A tip-off from the worried mother of Hells Angel Peter Hill saved the life of Melbourne policeman Bob Armstrong, who led investigations against the outlaw biker gangs.
Ma Hill told them an American was coming to kill Armstrong — a murder which would have happened if police had not done their homework on likely hit men and arrested James Patton “Jim Jim” Brandes at the airport.
Before he was deported, Brandes was visited in a cell by his target, Armstrong. Brandes recognised him immediately. He had done his homework, too.
“Jesus,” Brandes reportedly grunted, “you DO look like Benny Hill.”
Hit men and international drug trafficking made Tame increasingly uneasy. He finished off writing to match film footage, most of it taken at the annual Angels rock concerts.
The open air shows at Broadford attracted big bands of the era such as Rose Tattoo — and Midnight Oil, whose “invitation” came in the form of a note from Ball Bearing attached to an arrow fired into the band’s Sydney base.
It was another Sydney band, Jimmy and the Boys, who struck trouble at Broadford. Singer Ignatius Jones was so used to getting away with shock rock he made the mistake of canning the Angels on stage. He was immediately smashed by an enforcer, who would have crippled him if Ball Bearing hadn’t jumped in.
As for the documentary, Thunderground, it never got a chance at the box office because when it opened, some low-rent Hells Angels turned up and demanded a share of the “door”.
Cinema owners swiftly decided to drop the film rather than deal with the bad guys.
Tame still has a rare copy of Thunderground, proof that he ran with an outlaw motorcycle gang and survived to tell the tale. Not to mention all the others in his book.
Finding the Russian spy defector, Vladimir Petrov, in a Melbourne hospital is just one of them.
But the day they put a wild boar in the boot of a hire car is funnier. They don’t make newspapers like Truth any more, and this is its requiem.
The Awful Truth; Simon & Schuster; $32.99
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