Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Graham Ashton’s time in the top job has been plagued by scandal

A trusted senior adviser outed as a violent and racist internet “troll”, an explosive secret interview uncovered in the Silk-Miller murders, a criminal lawyer turned informer on Melbourne’s gangland players - Graham Ashton could be preparing to call time on his reign as top cop, writes Andrew Rule.

The police force’s bad year started seven weeks early — just after Rekindling won last season’s Melbourne Cup. As punters and partygoers flocked to Flemington for the carnival, this newspaper’s investigative reporter Anthony Dowsley was busy rekindling interest in a story that had been bubbling undetected for at least five years.

A few months earlier, Dowsley had uncovered a secret police interview containing explosive and controversial evidence about the murder of policemen Gary Silk and Rodney Miller in late 1998.

The interview was with the ex-girlfriend of Jason Roberts, the supposed “junior partner” convicted of taking part in the murders in Cochranes Road, Moorabbin, late on the night of August 16, 1998.

Jason Roberts’ former girlfriend provided an alibi for him in the Silk Miller murders in a secret police interview, uncovered by Herald Sun reporter Anthony Dowsley. Picture: Richard Cisar-Wright

The young woman was in a unique but unenviable position: as well as being Roberts’ former girlfriend, she was the daughter of the evil Bandali Debs, the depraved killer and armed robber who is unquestionably guilty of the Silk-Miller murders and other chilling crimes.

Both men had been convicted of the police murders after a marathon reinvestigation by officers understandably eager to avenge their comrades’ lives.

But the young woman’s statement clearly suggested that only her father was guilty of murdering the policemen, and that the then teenage Roberts had been scooped up because he had done earlier robberies with Debs.

She stated that while Roberts had routinely committed crimes with Debs, the opposite was not necessarily true: Debs — who owned the illegal handguns used in the robberies and the murders — often cruised the suburbs alone at night to scout future robberies.

If her story was correct, and Roberts had been “stitched up”, it would shake public confidence in police methods. Perhaps that is why it took so long to surface.

It wasn’t until veteran homicide squad investigator Ron Iddles reinvestigated the case in 2013 that the Debs-acted-alone scenario was aired.

Iddles asked the killer’s daughter for details of the night of the murder, and was astounded when she told him that Roberts had been home in bed with her while her father borrowed her Hyundai car.

Because of the way the Silk-Miller murder trial had been run, Roberts had never been questioned in court about his movements on the night of the murders, foolishly agreeing not to give any evidence that would undermine Debs’ defence.

Veteran homicide squad investigator Ron Iddles looked into the Silk-Miller murder investigation and uncovered a key witness statement that had been doctored two years after the murders.

Iddles knew she had not seen Roberts for many years and had nothing to do with him, as she was happily married and had built a new life away from her dysfunctional past.

It seemed to Iddles the woman had nothing to gain and much to lose by lying to give Roberts an alibi. It led the veteran detective to rake over the ashes of the case — to the obvious anger of some of his former colleagues.

But he pushed on, and uncovered a key witness statement that had been doctored two years after the murders to make it look as if the dying Rod Miller had gasped with his last breath that he’d seen two gunmen, not one.

The police and prosecution’s problem was that no living witness had actually seen two gunmen.

Dowsley broke the story in late November, revealing that the obviously doctored document had been handed to the independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission.

By then, former police had already tagged the force “Ashton’s Circus”.

That vaguely insulting tag gathered strength as the new year of 2018 brought new problems for police command.

By the time the storm broke over the Roberts investigation, “the chief” was prepared to say publicly he needed special leave over Christmas-New Year to recover from mental stress.

In a force in which 1700 members suffer depression and more than 5000 are judged at risk of “self-medicating” with alcohol, it is no surprise — and no disgrace — that their boss feels the pressure of an extremely tough job. He was brave enough to stare down gossips and critics by going public as an example to other officers.

Graham Ashton was brave enough to say he needed to take stress leave during his time as commissioner.

Graham Ashton never publicly linked his stress leave to the Roberts case — and could hardly be blamed personally for what had happened many years before — but coping with the fallout from the Roberts affair must have been high on the list of things that kept him awake at night.

He was wedged between two forces: on one side the growing media and public support for the conclusions of the credible, well-known and stubbornly honest Iddles; on the other side were stubbornly “loyal” and sometimes angry police who backed the original Lorimer Taskforce investigators and believed Roberts had got what he deserved, regardless of methods used.

The mystery of the doctored statement was referred to IBAC — and it will be a show stopper when the commission’s public inquiry begins next February.

It is possible, of course, that there is not enough evidence to prove a conspiracy to dolly up the case against Roberts. But the controversy has left a bad smell lingering over the force.

If it turns out that seasoned detectives and “turn-a-blind-eye” bosses would let an accused person be incriminated through the bending and breaking of rules, what other shortcuts might they take?

That is a loaded question.

At the start of this year, the answer had been abundantly clear to the chief commissioner and his people for some time: they knew that Purana Taskforce investigators had gambled they could turn a criminal lawyer into a “super grass” to lock up all the main players in the “gangland war”.

The tactic of recruiting a lawyer seemed so preposterous that the police brains trust feared it was going to blow up in their faces — which is why the force spent so much time and money in court trying to keep the scandal suppressed.

Lawyer X has been one of the biggest scandals in Victoria’s history.

Again, it was reporter Anthony Dowsley who had early knowledge of the Lawyer X controversy and pursued it like a dog with a bone — even longer than he had shadowed the Jason Roberts case.

By the time Graham Ashton took the reins from Ken Lay in 2015, a storm was gathering over using the informer that her (now-embarrassed) handlers had dubbed “3838”.

Alongside those big stories, Dowsley chased down smaller ones that also throw light on problems the force faces from its own members and their pugnacious union, the Police Association.

Such as the case of Sgt Daniel Sciore, who used every avenue to beat a drink-driving charge after running his car over a 10-metre “cliff” while four times the legal blood-alcohol limit.

Despite the fact Sciore was not only off his face but off-duty, the police union spent $150,000 of its members’ fees to fund an expensive but doomed defence for the drunken cop, who even concocted an unlikely story that someone else had been driving when he ran off Old Melbourne Rd at Chirnside Park in June, 2014.

A drunken sergeant telling porkies is a minnow compared with Lawyer X and the Jason Roberts case — but it shows the resistance of police members and their union to anything that shines a bright light on their behaviour. The insiders’ kneejerk reaction that there’s “nothing to see here” is as clear in small cases as it is in big ones.

Then there are the middleweight scandals, such as the revelation in May that Victorian police had calmly faked 258,000 breathalyser tests in five years.

But Lawyer X and (soon) the Jason Roberts case will dwarf the breathalyser rort, which is cold comfort for police command.

Lawyer X, especially, is a little close to home for the chief. He could legitimately shrug off the Roberts case but, in his senior roles in the force, he arguably had inside knowledge of “3838”.

By the time Mr Ashton was back at his desk after his stress break, there was plenty more stress to cope with.

Assistant Commissioner Brett Guerin was outed as an internet “troll” who wrote violent and racist rants online.

First up was the disgrace of one of his trusted senior officers (and head of internal affairs) Assistant Commissioner Brett Guerin, outed as an internet “troll” who wrote violent and racist rants online — and as a liar who denied the offence point blank until faced with stark evidence then sacked.

Not all exits have been as public as Guerin’s.

The circumstances leading to the “disappearance” of another extremely senior officer were supposedly linked to his handling of Lawyer X.

The force also buzzed with salacious rumours about the supposed reasons behind another male officer’s sudden resignation, part of an exodus of top officers that also saw Andrew Crisp and Lucinda Nolan saying goodbye.

The rise and fall of senior officers has always been part of the brutal office politics played in the force command. All chief commissioners are criticised while they in the hot seat, surrounded by ambitious people used to standing on fingers and toes.

Graham Ashton made it clear at the beginning of the year that he sees himself as a “one-term chief”. If he serves out his five-year contract he will be around until 2020 but speculation is mounting that he might step aside some time in the new year.

Apart from rumours of uneasy relations with the State Government following the police investigation of Labor’s “Red Shirt” scandal, there is the fact he embarked a few months ago on the 1000km walk in support of police mental health.

It was a “feel-good” gesture that built a rapport with the often stroppy police union, but it might be interpreted as something the boss would do only after deciding there was life after the corner office.

He told a reporter early this year: “You can stay too long, which is not good for the force. Better to leave and give someone else a crack.” It’s just a matter of when.

So, who might want to try on the ringmaster’s hat in Ashton’s three-ring circus? The betting is Deputy Commissioner Shane Patton tops the shortlist but it is no one-horse field: Victoria’s record of staying ahead of terrorist threats (so far) suggests that the head of counter terrorism, Ross Guenther, and his opposite number at intelligence and covert support, Neil Paterson, are not friendless in the market.

Then there is Andrew Crisp, the deputy commissioner who moved out to take over as Emergency Management Commissioner. He is shaved down like an Olympic swimmer and looks nearly as fit.

As for the rest — as the bookies say, write your own ticket.