Paul William Higgins the cop who was mad, bad and dangerous to know

Paul William Higgins was a violent thug, standover man and a rapist, and he did it all while wearing a badge. He was a ruthless, brutal and very, very corrupt cop, writes Andrew Rule.

Paul William Higgins was one of Victoria’s most corrupt police officers.

When Lindy was 19 and living in East Melbourne, she answered a knock late one evening to a detective who was dating the woman in the unit next door.

Lindy had met him only once, when her neighbour Julie introduced him as her boyfriend. She knew his name but didn’t know he was notorious: one of the most violent and corrupt policemen in the land.

The detective said his girlfriend wasn’t home — hardly surprising, given she was a nightclub waitress — and asked if he could wait at Lindy’s unit. It was a deliberate ruse by a cunning predator. The teenager let the detective into her flat. He flashed a huge roll of cash, presumably to impress her. She made him a cup of coffee and attempted small talk. He rewarded her kindness by raping her.

Lindy was terrified, powerless as he pinned her arms with an iron grip. Afterwards, she was shaken and sobbing. She did not have a telephone so waited until morning, frightened to venture out in the dark.

After daylight, she went to the nearest police station to report the rape. As soon as she told the officer on duty her attacker’s name, he put down his pen and told her to “go home and forget about it”.

No point taking it further, he warned. It was true: in the Victoria Police of 1978, the rapist was untouchable, like his pal Roger Rogerson in Sydney.

His name was Paul William Higgins, a former student at Assumption College Kilmore. The tough South Melbourne kid was one of the best footballers and cricketers of his year — and the school bully.

“He would say ‘G’day’ one day and punch you in the face the next,” says a former classmate. He joined the police at 17 and found an outlet for his brutal instincts, training as a boxer after playing a couple of VFL games for South Melbourne.

Hard, ruthless and cunning, “Buck” Higgins rose fast and was made a detective very young because he “got results”. No one cared how.

He was soon tied up in systematic corruption that effectively made him a silent partner to a murderous drug dealer running illegal brothels. Apart from brothel protection money, Higgins would extort cash from sex workers. He was the most dangerous of a cell of rogue cops “running hot” in the crime squads.

Paul William Higgins was one of Victoria’s most corrupt police officers.

Higgins and another notorious policeman — unnamed because he is still alive — terrorised and robbed brothel owners and drug dealers while protecting those who paid huge bribes.

The fact that Higgins and his partner survived so long suggests that some in the chain of command turned a blind eye. After all, the rogues got information as well as money from their pet crooks — notably brothel king Geoffrey Lamb and drug dealer Dennis “Mr Death” Allen, oldest and baddest of “Granny Evil” Kath Pettingill’s doomed brood.

It’s likely that some of the bribe money Higgins and his mate collected flowed upwards, at least as far as the then Commander Phil “Fat Harry” Bennett, subsequently alleged to be corrupt.

But there were other senior police, too, suspected of condoning harmless raids on friendly brothels to keep up appearances.

Someone then close to Dennis Allen — a crazed criminal behind several vicious murders — once saw Allen count $14,000 cash into a bag.

It seemed an odd number, but Allen explained that it was “a grand a day each” for Higgins “and his mate”. It was a staggering amount of money in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when Allen was buying multiple houses in Richmond’s Cremorne district for less than $20,000 each.

Higgins drove a sports car — a Ferrari copy — and wore expensive clothes. He also owned an extravagantly renovated house on a huge block in East Malvern — a “nice” suburb but within easy striking distance of his haunts in St Kilda, Prahran and Richmond, where the streets were paved with gold for a crooked cop.

He was straight out of a Tarantino film — quick with his fists or with a gun. He carried a pistol in an ankle holster, even off duty.

He and a handful of others organised for “rival” brothels to be burned or bombed. More sinister was the persistent rumour that troublesome prostitutes were given heroin “hot shots” to kill them.

Dennis Allen playfully points a pistol at the head of his mother Kath Pettingill at a party in one of Dennis' houses.

Another story circulated among fellow police: Higgins and his mate would supposedly “lend” police pistols to Dennis Allen for specific criminal acts.

It was the perfect racket: even if ballistics experts recovered a bullet from a scene it was hardly going to be checked against any one of several thousand police Smith & Wesson revolvers. It’s called hiding in plain sight.

The older man was known for dangerous stunts. One was to open the hatch in a South Melbourne police cell door and fire shots through it into the back wall as prisoners cowered. Another trick was to wear a gorilla mask while driving a police car, to frighten motorists. “Thank God he didn’t drink — he was crazy enough sober,” the retired officer says. “Outlandish, childish stuff.”

The corrupt pair were so close to Dennis Allen that Allen gave his lawyer two telephone numbers and said if he (Allen) was ever arrested, just to call one or the other with a cryptic message: “That bloke is at (name of police station).”

The lawyer called the numbers several times when Allen was arrested. He recognised one voice as Higgins’; the other was even easier to pick.

Allen was untouchable as well as evil. Higgins or his mate would turn up if “Mr Death” was charged and invariably arrange bail for him. A “grand” a day retainer will do that. The inference, of course, is that court staff were in on the racket.

One internal affairs investigator told to keep Higgins and his mate under surveillance ended up refusing to do it. Every time he was sent to watch them, supposedly in secret, they’d immediately identify where he was, then approach and silently threaten him by aiming a finger at his head like a gun.

It was the bent cops’ way of saying they had insiders tipping them off that internal affairs were after them.

Higgins might have raped young women with impunity, but eventually his luck ran out in other ways.

After running hot for close to 20 years, he eventually faced conspiracy charges in 1987, following a massive investigation that spread Australia-wide and ultimately cost more than $30 million.

Higgins didn’t go quietly, calling in favours from fellow police who should have known better than insist the Police Association waste millions on a trial that lasted 420 days and cost taxpayers $6 million.

He was finally jailed in 1993, and sentenced to six years at Ararat, where police and paedophiles are often kept for their own protection.

Higgins came out with many big muscles but very few friends.

He threatened to name names among senior police he knew had profited from corruption, but never did.

He might have concluded that he who lives by the gun can die by it.

Not that he lived a long time, anyway. He died in early 2016 in his 60s, wracked by cancer and drug addiction, a husk of the man who had terrified so many.

As for Lindy, she is now an artist living in the Blue Mountains.

She hopes that revealing what Higgins did to her might encourage others to say “Me too”. Because he wasn’t the only one and neither was she.

[e-mail]