Deadline: Youth criminals posting and boasting all the way from Gippsland to Gold Coast
Old-time crooks would keep a low profile to avoid the fuzz. Not so the new breed of home invaders and luxury car thieves.
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Andrew Rule and Mark Buttler with the latest crime buzz.
World’s a stage for teen crims
A couple of Victoria’s legion of youth offenders have taken “post and boast” to new levels, posing for the socials at the Sydney Opera House on a 1600km interstate crime spree.
As we’ve become aware lately, “post and boast” is the phenomenon motivating many young aggravated burglary perpetrators.
It means rather than stealing prestige cars to sell to chop shops for profit, they’re grabbing them to cruise around and send photos and videos of their exploits to various online platforms. Showbiz for show offs.
And so it was (allegedly) recently when two boys and a girl, aged 14 and 15, were found sleeping in a stolen vehicle in a McDonald’s restaurant car park on the Gold Coast.
They’d started their spree stealing two cars in Gippsland before heading north and allegedly pulling a carjacking, break-ins and fuel drive-offs over several days.
One of the highlights, it appears, was a trip to the Sydney Opera House where selfies were taken and uploaded so everyone could have a gawk.
Who says crime and culture can’t mix?
No Easey answers
Every big news event generates strange stories and the 1977 Easey St murders are no exception.
The murders of Suzanne Armstrong and Susan Bartlett have been back in the news in recent weeks after the arrest of a suspect in Italy, leading reporters to scour yellowed cutting files about the case.
One story which got a big run nine months after the murders was the claim by British “mystic” Doris Stokes that she had been helping the homicide squad.
Stokes, a hugely popular figure at the time, assured one local newshound that she had made contact with spirits when detectives visited her at the Windsor Hotel.
Unfortunately, the reporter didn’t realise that Doris was careless with the truth in more than one way. Not only could she not actually communicate with the dead but she told porkies to the living.
When the newspaper came out the day after Doris’s claims, it seemed clear she hadn’t been in touch with anyone in the next world — and probably not homicide detectives in this one. Anyway, that was the gist of a statement from homicide boss Chief Insp. Paul Delianis.
“None of my detectives has been to any such performance by Mrs Stokes,” stated the senior policeman dubbed “the Golden Greek,” who would never tell a lie unless it was absolutely necessary for the correct administration of justice.
To be fair, the public appetite for “psychics” and the like was high and often dragged police into stunts that highlight how desperate they were to solve huge cases like Easey St and, the decade before, the mystery of the vanished Beaumont children.
That is why, in 1966, Dutch “clairvoyant” Gerard Croiset was “invited” (as in paid to come) to Australia to guess about the whereabouts of the three children who disappeared from Glenelg Beach in Adelaide on Australia Day that year.
Police and the children’s parents, Jim and Nancy Beaumont, were sceptical, but Croiset’s expenses were paid by another golden Greek, wealthy property tycoon Con Polites.
During his flying visit, Croiset made headlines but no headway, failing to find any trace of the missing children.
Newspapers photographed Croiset standing on a new concrete floor in a factory, stating calmly that this was where the Beaumonts were buried.
The floor was dug up at huge expense. Nothing was found.
But the amazing thing is that desperate people will try anything. So Croiset was again called in about a terrible kidnapping case in London in late 1969 — that of Muriel McKay, wife of the then young publishing tycoon Rupert Murdoch’s deputy chairman Alick McKay.
Croiset was hired by a McKay family friend, Eric Cutler. Croiset said the missing woman was in a white farmhouse north or north-east of London, and that nearby was another farm (a safe bet in farming country) and an aerodrome.
Muriel McKay’s body was never found — but one of the Hosein brothers convicted of her kidnap and murder owned a farmhouse at Bishop’s Stortford, in Hertfordshire, north-east of London.
It might be that, like a stopped clock that is right twice a day, Croiset made so many predictions that he fluked getting one right occasionally.
More likely, perhaps, is that by the time Croiset was consulted, the Hosein farm was already under suspicion. Either way, neither he (nor the police) could locate the poor woman’s remains, prompting speculation her body had been fed to dogs or pigs.
In 1978, the Chief Constable of Devon and Cornwall Police hired Croiset to investigate the disappearance of schoolgirl Genette Tate. Sadly, he didn’t have a clue.
Barrister is cough lolly crooner
IT’S a long road to Hollywood but Melbourne barrister Bryn Overend has taken that first small step.
While some lawyers play golf or drive fast cars to use up their spare time and cash, Mr Overend is made of different stuff. He has a burgeoning acting career.
Just as lawyers have to pay their dues representing drink-drivers for legal aid rates at suburban magistrates courts, every aspiring Marlon Brando must start somewhere.
Multiple sources, speaking on condition of anonymity to sound like important truth-tellers, have told Deadline of the Overend acting debut.
It is in the role of a man whose sore throat was cured by a $9.99 pack of Strepsils Herby Cough Throat Lozenges in a recent Chemist Warehouse ad.
That’s an apt product to be selling, given the reputation lawyers have for talking until their vocal chords give up — or a judge tells them to resume their seat.
We think our hero nailed his role, especially the scene where he recovered from his sore throat and ventured out for a night of karaoke.
That said, he probably shouldn’t sit by the phone waiting for a screen test for a future reboot of Rumpole of the Bailey.
Tyre Smoking ceremony
Older readers would remember a time when a “gender reveal” happened in a hospital maternity ward.
Nowadays, things are different, especially if you’re part of Melbourne’s vast petrolhead community where the thing is to buy special tyres which billow out either blue or pink smoke when put under the stress of a burnout session.
One young bloke at Frankston North picked AFL Grand Final Day to tell the world he and his partner have a boy on the way.
We don’t know where he bought his tyres but he’ll be up for plenty more money after the police came down hard this week.
There seem to be a few outlets where the special rubber can be purchased, including — of all places — Doveton.
Highway Max’s tyres promise expectant parents that their gender reveal party will be a “HUGE success”.
“We make our tyres using a special rubber compound, designed for maximum smoke and colour density,” is the HM online boast.
