What links a string of crimes to the kickboxing world?

Is there a link between a series of slick Melbourne heists and two unsolved underworld murders? We may never know.

Paul Fyfield (left) at the funeral of William ’Willie’ Thompson.

The detectives left their polite “guest” in the armed robbery squad interview room while they went outside to gather their thoughts — and to let Paul Fyfield stew in his. Or so they thought.

It’s a common enough interrogation tactic: let the target sweat bullets between bouts of questions. But the wiry, well-spoken man in the small room was unfazed.

When the detectives came back to the room with their game faces on for another round of good cop-bad cop, their script went out the door and their jaws hit the floor.

Fyfield was standing on two chairs set well apart, a foot on each, and doing the “splits”. It was a nonchalant display of strength, balance and concentration by someone who spends half his life in the gym, either honing his own strength and endurance or training someone else.

The detectives turned around and went straight out again, shaking their heads. They didn’t have to worry about losing the psychological edge ... they’d never had it.

The clear winner by TKO was Paul Fyfield: martial arts expert, boxing trainer, gym proprietor, fight promoter, school teacher, mentor to troubled youths — and for a long time a suspect over a series of spectacularly successful cash delivery heists.

The detectives could see first-hand why the kickboxing fraternity call Fyfield “The General”. As someone joked later, he had more natural leadership qualities than most chief commissioners. And, as it turns out, his record is almost as clean.

The law tried to nail him for years over unsolved robberies running into millions of dollars, but couldn’t lay a glove on him. In the ring and out of it, he was always just as good at slipping punches as at landing them.

Paul Fyfield.

Paul Fyfield is an enigma wrapped in a mystery. His clean-cut figure stands out even among the intriguing group of fighters spawned by an extraordinary Melbourne institution, the Bob Jones Martial Arts dojo and its security arm.

Bob Jones, with his flowing red hair and Viking berserker moustache, cut a dash in the 1970s, when he was almost as well known as the celebrities and rock stars he and his freestyle martial artists escorted in skin tight T-shirts and flared jeans.

Young, fit and well-muscled, they made a change from the gone-to-seed boxers and beer-bellied cops who moonlighted as bouncers. When the Stones, Joe Cocker and Bowie hit Melbourne, their people called Jones and his close personal protectors joined the entourage.

Stars loved Jones and his crew. So much that Stevie Nicks from Fleetwood Mac and Frida from ABBA did action photoshoots with Jones for his book on self-defence for women. Bob had come a long way for a ’ranga head banger from the ’burbs, although one of his tips to potential rape victims was what he called “witty insults” such as “I’ve seen better knobs on a dunny door.”

The Jones boys trained in the white robes and colour-coded belts but underneath the etiquette and rituals, as authentically Asian as the dim sim and Chiko roll, the new breed martial artists had a few things in common with the old broken-nosed bash artists who had punched for pay at Festival Hall.

Buddhism or not, some of the new wave also bent or broke the law. Arguably, they were better at it because they were disciplined mentally as well as physically.

Take Dave Hedgecock, for instance, a fighter who made pitbull terriers look timid. Along the way to 75 kickboxing bouts and Australian and Pacific middleweight titles, Hedgecock once missed a world title shot because of a training setback — a .38 calibre slug in his chest.

Bob Jones teaching self defence to singer Stevie Nicks.

Fyfield would recall the shooting as nothing to do with the fight game (“Dave just got shot occasionally”), saying that “the last time Dave got shot” he’d insisted on fronting at the gym two days later, ignoring his brush with death to make a point to whoever had pulled the trigger. Hedgecock later did time for possessing a gun.

Fyfield grew up around Oakleigh and Chadstone, whereas a lot of his kickboxer mates were from the other side of the city. Such as the Lanciana brothers — Frank, Joey, Angelo and notably Pasquale, who fought under the ring-name “Percy No Mercy”.

Percy’s young wife, Maryanna, was tragically murdered in her bed — apparently while her hardworking husband slept at his parents’ place near Footscray rather than drive the extra distance to Werribee after working a double shift, going from his Chapel St pizza place to fill in for a friend on the door of a city nightspot until 5am.

Lanciana put up a $55,000 reward to match the official reward for information on his wife’s murder. There were no takers.

There was another band of brothers, too — George, Nick and Ziad Zakharia — who made their name in kickboxing rings, then in other fields.

Dave Hedgecock.

“George Zak” once knocked out three opponents at one of the primitive fight nights they staged in the sport’s early days in the late 1970s. They attracted a tough crowd: it was $2 at the door but you got your money back if you got in the ring. George’s other money-making schemes included robbery, for which he did jail in the 1980s.

Big brother Nick Zakharia, a national champion bodybuilder, was extradited from America in 1990 and jailed for sending cocaine through the mail to Australia, where he had 28 convictions. He had already served time in California.

Younger brother Ziad, a dedicated martial artist (and one-time stripper), teaches at the Frank Dando Sports Academy, a “last chance” school for troubled teenage boys in Ashwood. Paul Fyfield has also been a teacher there for years, as well as running the renowned FightFit gym in South Melbourne.

Fyfield is a fluent exponent of the Dando theory of teaching the boys English and maths and filling the rest of their days with vigorous exercise, combat sports and outdoor adventure. In an interview recently, he underlined the basic premise of the curriculum is that “No” isn’t the right answer.

When a boy says he “doesn’t feel like swimming today” the instructor’s reply is “Don’t you? Get your bathers on.” He and Ziad Zakharia, now the school’s principal, lead by example. The kids seem to like it.

George Zakharia.

Ziad Zakharia.

Fyfield and his friends Percy Lanciana and the Zakharias are well known in combat sport circles and the security industry, which overlap with nightclubs, pubs and underworld elements. But they were relatively unknown to the wider public and most police, at least until certain faces started to appear at underworld funerals during the gangland war between 2000 and 2006.

When drug dealing kickboxer Willie Thompson was shot dead outside a Chadstone martial arts club in 2003, two Zakharias and Fyfield were among the pallbearers and Dragan “Machinegun Charlie” Arnautovic sent condolences.

Kickboxing is a broad church but not altogether puritanical. For every hero such as heavyweight “Stan The Man” Longinidis, who won eight world titles, there’s a villain like “Machinegun Charlie”, drug dealer.

Charlie, who once fought several rounds with a broken arm, dealt heroin from a van. His bull mastiff guarded his drugs and money in the back. The dog would snarl as Charlie talked to buyers or suppliers, leaving no doubt what would happen if they tried to rip off his owner.

Unfortunately for Charlie, a Croatian-speaking policeman was able to translate a tapped conversation with his mother about a stash hidden under her house. He went to jail several times, unlike Fyfield and Lanciana.

This did not stop police from trying to match up Fyfield and his various associates with a series of serious unsolved crimes. Charges have been laid but very little has stuck.

Wladimir Babaeff.

In 2014, police launched Operation Tideland to look for links between Maryanna Lanciana’s murder and up to three other apparent executions and a series of slick robberies — the famous multi-million dollar Richmond heist of 1994, a $100,000 cash cargo stolen at Perth Airport in 2005 and a $2m theft from an Armaguard van at Sunshine Plaza in 2006.

The circumstances are intriguing. In Perth, the cash vanished after baggage handlers dropped it from a trolley between the cargo shed and a plane; at Sunshine, guards inexplicably left their van unguarded just long enough for thieves to strike. The cash van at Richmond, stopped by a fake roadworks gang, was opened by someone supplied with the right key.

Then there was the $500,000 robbery at Myer’s city store in 1993. Tideland detectives arrested and charged helicopter pilot Wladimir Wladimirovich Babaeff for that in 2015, but he did not identify others involved.

At Chadstone in 1994, a cool bandit forced security guards to lie down, shot each in the leg and took $80,000 — then swiftly “lamed” a foolhardy shopper who followed him.

Police don’t believe in clairvoyants or coincidence. But they do believe in inside information. They think there’s a link between the thefts and the robbery — and at least another two unsolved underworld murders. They suspect the same people have knowledge of a string of crimes spanning 26 years.

It’s no coincidence police have announced $1m rewards for each of the three “cold case” murders Tideland is reviewing. But the question remains: what connects the murder of an innocent young mother in her own home with the violent deaths of a crooked property developer named Dimitrios Belias in 1999 and a brooding bouncer named George Germanos in 2001?

Someone apparently either knew (or knew of) all those victims. Maybe it’s the same “trigger man”, who is also a suspect for at least one other unsolved homicide.

No-one is saying “The General” suspects who shot who. In any case, it’s hard to imagine him breaking his silence. As they say in the services, loose lips sink ships.

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