Andrew Rule: Only dumb luck saved Furlan Club arsonists from becoming killers
Only dumb luck stopped innocent workers from being incinerated when a fire bomb exploded at Thornbury venue the Furlan Club. At least one of the teens arrested was raised to know much better.
Andrew Rule
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People were still cleaning up inside the Furlan Club after midnight when the fire bomb exploded. Only dumb luck stopped those innocent workers from being incinerated, a tragedy that would have turned young teenage “torches” into killers.
But, if they knew any of that, the kids with the petrol bombs and cigarette lighters and getaway car didn’t care. Before dawn that morning, they set fire to another venue at Thomastown, a few kilometres away by stolen car from the Furlan Club’s Thornbury address.
There were three other fire bombings at suburban venues in the same hectic two weeks in February this year.
The Al Nafoura venue in Mill Park was hit twice in six days. Security camera footage shows young thugs armed with military-style weapons dragging a security guard from his car and holding him down at gunpoint while they burn the place.
In these cases, arsonists as young as 14 were speeding around suburban Melbourne in stolen cars, carried petrol bombs and lit them. And were paid (very little) to do it by evil and manipulative gangsters far from the scene.
It’s easy to say these young offenders are stupid, poor and don’t know any better. But at least one of those arrested after the Furlan Club arson was raised to know much better. That particular baby-faced potential killer is the child of a lawyer and a small business operator.
When the police came knocking at the parents’ house in a quiet suburb, it must have been the worst shock of their lives — and yet that arrest could be the wake-up call that saves their child’s life. Or somebody else’s.
Young people, but especially young males, have lousy impulse control and a poor grasp on potential consequences of their actions. From the sportsfield to the battlefield to the street, too often it’s teenagers who take the biggest risks.
The history of crime is littered with examples, some of them so famous they are part of popular culture. The new small screen drama Billy the Kid is yet another Hollywood version of the tawdry life story of Henry McCarty, alias William Bonney, who stabbed a man in a bar at 12, spent his teenage years stealing and gambling and committed his first murder at 17 before a predictably violent death at 22, since immortalised in film and song.
But Billy McCarty is just one of the many young offenders who went knocking on heaven’s door. And for what? For easy money, for the sick pleasure of hurting fellow humans, for the empty applause and shallow admiration of fools and fairweather friends. Or for “kicks” — the crazy thrill of taking risks.
The young Ned Kelly was no doubt already a thief when he first went bushranging at 15 with the veteran robber Harry Power. At 16, the apprentice bushranger was locked up briefly in Kyneton Jail and by age 20 he was a hardened criminal, a narcissistic horse thief destined to be a folk hero, doomed to hang at 25.
Such is life for the young and the reckless … while it lasts. If they don’t end up dead like Billy and Ned and too many more, they end up buried in concrete and steel cells, serving monster sentences like those sucked in and spat out by the endless underworld wars.
If they don’t “pull up” in time, jail or death is the most likely prospect. All of which is reflected in a police document obtained by the Herald Sun that shows what can happen when youth criminals are let run wild.
In 2013, three teenagers embarked on a series of terrifying armed robberies on pokies venue across Melbourne, jamming a sawn-off gun and a pistol in the faces of terrified customers and staff before driving stolen getaway cars at lethal speeds of up to 180km/h.
Operation Darknite, conducted by the Armed Crime Squad in October and November 2013, targeted five violent armed robberies of gaming venues, four in the western suburbs and one in Mulgrave, over 33 days.
Significantly, both guns and getaway car were provided by an older, experienced middle-eastern organised crime figure who told his teenage underlings which targets to hit and when during a month of madness and badness that netted the mastermind a lot of stolen cash for a minimum of risk to himself.
Each heist was carried out in less than two minutes, the culprits wearing masks, balaclavas, gloves and multiple layers of clothing to be discarded as a way to instantly change their appearance and foil descriptions victims gave police.
The police report makes it clear that the young robbers and their older adviser were totally complicit in serious, well-planned crimes calculated to enrich themselves at the expense of those they traumatised along the way.
The report states: “The armed robberies in question targeted lucrative venues reasonably expected to be holding large sums of cash. It could also be reasonably expected these venues would contain large numbers of patrons and staff, particularly the elderly.
“The commission of these armed robberies involved a high level of planning and preparation … It entailed the sourcing of a stolen motor vehicle, stolen registration plates and a stolen firearm (shotgun) … most clothing worn by the offenders was either destroyed or disposed of. Although (police) were unable to identify any ‘safe house’, it became evident that offenders were utilising a secure location to store the stolen motor vehicle, firearms and stolen cash.”
The victims were mostly elderly and were “ordered down on the ground by masked men with a shotgun pointed directly in their face.
“Many … have suffered severe psychological distress and trauma as a result. Many report that these offences have impacted on the way they now live their life, forcing them to stay at home.”
In other words, the robbers were not larrikin kids lairising on a Saturday night. They were taking part in clinically planned, traumatising and potentially fatal crimes. And yet it seemed to frustrated police that when arrested and charged with the most serious crimes short of homicide and rape, the offenders were treated like schoolkids caught shoplifting.
In the end, two of the young offenders walked from court on the basis they had already done 235 days on remand by the time they offered guilty pleas.
Police were angered about this.
“One could argue that the element of punishment has not been achieved in these circumstances,” the report stated. “It could be argued that neither child has been held accountable for their actions.”
Fast forward to 2024. The postscript to the Operation Darknite robberies is that two of the three teenage criminals have become prominent players in Melbourne’s underworld.
Unlike long-dead criminals from history, these now frightening adults can’t be named because of the stringent rules governing under-age court proceedings in the recent past. But anyone familiar with the rise of middle eastern crime in Australia in the last decade will know their surnames.
One of the pair is now a feared and wealthy gangland figure implicated in high-level drug trafficking and crimes of violence as an adult. Detectives have noted during previous interactions his eagerness to learn everything he can about their tactics and investigative methods.
The other is a suspected drug dealer and money-launderer who has in the past made gaudy displays of his unexplained wealth on social media.
That was until his enemies put a big price on his increasingly isolated head and he was forced to move out of the Maseratis and into the shadows.
Meanwhile, the crime conveyor belt which produced those two grinds on, throwing up fresh pawns for older crooks to exploit the way they were.
Every week in Victoria, it is young offenders who have rushed to the frontline in the war over Melbourne’s illicit tobacco industry, burning smoke shops or carrying out ram-raids to steal goods that their masters will then on-sell.
The price of this crime apprenticeship is the sort of “career opportunities” which can and does set them on a long, wrong road for life.
These useful young idiots are paid often only a few hundred dollars a night to blow up businesses and risk killing or injuring innocent people living nearby.
Of course, it’s not only arson attacks. There have been cases of teens drawn into attempted hits and terrifying drive-by shootings that also endanger innocent lives.
Their criminal bosses, meanwhile, know that if the “kids” are caught, it’s odds on that bail will be granted automatically because of their tender years, making prison only a remote possibility.
Until the day comes, of course, that they turn 18 and find themselves a long way from the bleeding hearts and revolving doors of the Children’s Court. Then it’s too late to duck the consequences of their wasted youth.
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