A slipped sneaker helped lead police to Westmeadows tavern robber John Lindrea
He’s no Prince Charming, but in a Cinderella moment, a slipped shoe at the scene of a shocking Melbourne armed robbery helped police fit John Lindrea to the crime.
Victoria
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It was no dazzling glass slipper, but instead an unassuming black and grey Adidas sneaker.
However, it was the Cinderella moment that would help lead police to notorious crook John Lindrea.
In his bid to flee the scene of his latest crime — a terrifying armed robbery at Westmeadows Tavern north of Melbourne city — one of Lindrea’s shoes fell off.
The runner was found in the roof cavity of the suburban pub.
But for Lindrea, it wasn’t a fairytale Prince Charming looking for love who uncovered his solo slipper.
Instead, it was Armed Crime Squad detectives hellbent on finding who the shoe fit.
It was 3am on March 2, 2020, when Lindrea and his accomplice were dropped off by an associate outside the Ardlie St Tavern in Westmeadows.
Under the cloak of darkness they crept through the pub’s northern carpark, scaled the roof and removed some of the corrugated iron panels.
Climbing in, they then forced their way through the plaster ceiling into the venue’s kitchen.
The pair waited for almost two hours until the tavern’s assistant manager arrived.
After deactivating the alarm system and turning on the lights, she walked towards the main office door when she was confronted by the two armed intruders.
“Get on the ground,” the balaclava-wearing bandits yelled as they pointed the sawn-off shotguns in her face.
They demanded her keys and rose gold Apple watch from her wrist.
With a firearm just 15cm from her face, Lindrea’s co-accused then forced her to open ATMs and tills, before escorting her to the office to unlock three safes.
They filled a green canvas bag with $176,820.
Their victim was then shoved into a cupboard and a metal knife sharpener was wedged between the handles to secure the doors.
She told the court, in a victim impact statement, of how she thought she was going to be shot through the door.
“I thought I was never going to see my family again,” she said.
She described how she panicked and felt claustrophobic when later climbing into a makeshift cubby to play with her young relative.
“This is just one example of how life’s simple joys have been stolen from me,” she said.
“My life has changed so much. I am no longer locked in that cupboard, but emotionally I feel trapped.”
So traumatised by the hold-up, she no longer works at the tavern. She can’t even leave her house at night.
Lindrea’s shoe was not the only incriminating evidence left behind that morning.
In scenes reminiscent of a bungled burglary by rookie delinquents - as opposed to a man with a double murder, bank robberies and escaping prison on his rapsheet - police also found Lindrea had dumped his gloves and balaclava in a bin at the venue.
A blue jemmy bar, red-handled tin snips, yellow and black screwdriver and a UHF radio were also left at the scene.
Lindrea, then 57, even showed his face to the security cameras, and left behind empty Jack Daniels and cola drinks he had helped himself to from the fridge.
As his lawyer Matthew Page told the County Court this month in a pre-sentencing hearing, Lindrea’s DNA was left all over the tavern.
“This offending screams of someone who subconsciously feels more comfortable in custody and wishes to return there,” Mr Page said
He said Lindrea “can only be described as a man who is institutionalised”, having spent all but four years of his adult life behind bars.
But if Lindrea really wanted to return to prison, why did he not just hand himself into the police when they surrounded the tavern?
A keen-eyed cleaner arriving at the tavern at 5.10am saw the gunmen, and immediately retreated outside to alert emergency services.
Minutes later, police swarmed the tavern and had visuals of the crooks inside.
They even saw them trying to escape from the roof, before ducking their heads back inside.
But when they stormed the premises to arrest the men, they could not be found.
Heavily-armed specialist officers were left baffled at how the armed robbers had snuck past the police cordon.
When Lindrea was arrested at his Greenvale home a month later on April 1, he told detectives how they had hid in a wall cavity until about 7pm — one hour after police left.
They then kicked out the external wall partition and jumped out the wall before fleeing on foot.
Lindrea refused to identify his co-offender, or say where the firearms were.
Police released CCTV footage and a computerised face image of his alleged accomplice in a bid to identify him.
But he still remains unknown.
An associate who dropped the pair off at the tavern has also not been identified.
On November 30, seven months after the stick-up, police would be called back to the tavern after a cleaner found two firearms inside the exhaust fan ducts of the kitchen.
They were still fully-loaded with 12-gauge shotgun cartridges.
John William Lindrea — who also goes by John Wallace Burns and John William Wright — was born on March 10, 1962.
The court heard he barely received an education and had a “very sad and deprived background” — the details of which are prohibited from being reported.
In 1993, he was jailed for 25 years over the double murder of Kaelene McDonald and Andrew Johns, who he shot dead when asked to leave a house-warming party he had gatecrashed in Kinglake in 1992.
He has been convicted over two bank hold-ups, and spent two months on the run after escaping the old Pentridge Prison.
In 1995, he was busted again trying to escape Barwon Prison with notorious armed robber Christopher Dean Binse.
Five years later, he joined four co-accused in the County Court for the “Trial from Hell” over the prison gang bashing of triple murderer Gregory Brazel.
The trial became infamous after his co-accused, including Matthew Johnson, who would later go on to kill gangland figure Carl Williams in prison, constantly interrupting the proceedings by shouting out obscenities, hurling human faeces at the jury and baring their behinds.
Lindrea largely avoided the shenanigans, and even stayed seated in the dock when the others started a Mexican wave.
He was the only accused to be not charged with contempt; and the jury later acquitted him of assaulting Brazel.
Lindrea, now 59, this month pleaded guilty to armed robbery, false imprisonment and being a prohibited person in possession of a firearm.
If his lawyer’s claims are true in that he committed the armed robbery to return to prison, then Lindrea may well have just got his happily ever after.
He is on remand and is expected to be punished with a lengthy jail term when sentenced on October 4.
It might not be the fairytale ending for some, but if the shoe fits, wear it.
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