Deadline: Big Melbourne name in clear over creepy claims

A notable Melbourne name is, for now, in the clear after he was the subject of most serious allegations investigated by police.

He’s a notable Melbourne name and he’s in the clear, for now.

Mark Buttler and Andrew Rule with the latest scallywag scuttlebutt.

Case closed

A notable Melbourne name is, for now, in the clear after a criminal investigation which started last year.

We won’t name him because the matter has gone nowhere but he was the subject of most serious allegations.

Those creepy claims were very much at odds with his urbane persona but, ultimately, could not be proven.

“Following an investigation, it has been determined there is insufficient evidence to lay any criminal charges in relation to this matter,” a Victoria Police statement said.

It may be that this well-travelled chap from the southeast side of the Yarra can count himself lucky.

A Deadline colleague received some correspondence last year well before the police investigation of the man’s allegedly predatory activities.

The tip-off concerned accusations which were strikingly similar to those subsequently examined by detectives. Surely a coincidence.

Dogged beak sets fox after hounds

Police forces are like most government bodies: truckloads of public money are spent keeping the whole bloated organisation ticking over but budgets can be too tight to cover a tiny extra expense for something that could save lives.

So it was on Monday this week that Victoria Police, which has wasted millions on useless computer systems but never bothered with a specialist tracker dog, briefed an ace barrister to represent it at the Coroners Court.

It was only a mention hearing, lasting exactly 24 minutes, counting the throat clearing at the start.

But Felicity Fox, one of the Bar’s brightest up-and-comers, was there to represent the Chief Commissioner. Naturally, a legal eagle of Fox’s calibre doesn’t come cheaply.

But, of course, the force needs a barrister to protect itself because coroner David Ryan is politely but doggedly probing the performance and policies of police — both VicPol and its South Australian sisters — in the search for lost Adelaide woman Colleen South last winter.

Coroner Ryan dared ask the embarrassing question: how could a sick 58-year-old woman who’d wandered a mere 1400m from her abandoned car in Mallee farmland not be found for five weeks?

Colleen South with her daughter, Veronica. Picture: Supplied

Furthermore, why was it that a busy farmer happened to find her body under a tree while driving his tractor on routine chores, whereas a jamboree of police-directed searchers failed to?

The coroner said he wasn’t looking to lay blame, nor even necessarily to call an inquest into the unfortunate woman’s death. But he did say it was “hard for a lay person to understand why her body wasn’t found sooner.”

It wasn’t clear to him, he said, why the search “was done the way it was.” His main question: why weren’t dogs used immediately to track Ms South?

One possible reason is that it took more than two weeks from when Colleen South was last seen alive (on July 3) at a fuel depot at Berriwillock until Victoria Police formally took control of the search for her.

During those two weeks, local police had asked for help from the Air Wing and were twice refused. More vitally, perhaps, the police “canine unit” was also refused. Eventually, dogs and police on horses and motorbikes turned up after July 8, at least five days after Ms South had gone missing.

By then, any scent that might have been present on the first day was long gone.

As Coroner Ryan noted dryly, there may be good reasons why dogs weren’t called in earlier — “but they aren’t clear to me.”

The hearing was “not about blame but about identifying what could be done differently,” he said.

He would be obliged, he told Ms Fox, “if you could take that back to your client.”

Of course, she’d hardly have to bother, given that the excellently diverse police media unit has a bigger headcount than an AFL team.

They would be monitoring the hearing and transcribing it in triplicate for a board room full of people with braid on their shoulders.

And so millions are spent while lost people perish.

Tributes to Pasawm Lyhym who was fatally stabbed at trouble-plagued Sunshine station. Picture: Luis Enrique Ascui

Twentyman did the numbers

Tragic events at Sunshine railway station last Thursday where teenager Pasawm Lyhym was fatally stabbed by a tall, hooded individual with big hands and the unusual habit of carrying a machete.

The homicide squad is examining exactly what happened and what friction might have preceded it.

Prominent western suburbs youth worker Les Twentyman had seen something like this coming at the railway station for a long time.

Years ago, he took a state member on a fact-finding mission to the public transport hub so the parliamentarian could see first-hand the dangerous environment.

As they rounded a corner, the pair came across a bunch of youngsters going hammer and tongs in what the late Lou Richards might have called a ring-a-ding battle.

There was some thought given to intervening before the MP offered Twentyman some pragmatic advice on how best to deal with the matter.

“Les, it’s like politics. We don’t have the numbers. Let’s get the f... out of here.”

Mistaken identity

One of this column’s authors last week received a phone call from a producer at Neil Mitchell’s 3AW radio program.

It was an invitation to come on air and enlighten listeners on the important topic of immunotherapy.

Inn-umo-what?

We’d like to think we know something about crime but this column’s medical skills end somewhere near the application of a Band-Aid.

It soon became apparent the producer had intended to ring Mark Butler, who serves as federal health minister. What’s a stray T between friends?

It’s not the first time that overworked, rattled or inexperienced radio producers have dished up the wrong guest in a case of mistaken identity due to similar or identical names.

Mitchell’s long standing colleague, the breakfast shift artiste known as Ross Stevenson, still has a copy of a wonderful producer error when stand-in hosts (Sam Newman and another) were keen to speak to respected film critic Bill Collins about the then hit film Dances With Wolves.

What did Bill 'Mr Movies' Collins make of Dances with Wolves? 3AW listeners never found out.

The guest was polite and obliging despite the early call.

The interview went very well for about 30 seconds, until the point when Newman and his offsider got around to asking his expert opinion of the film, only to be met with a puzzled reaction. Who was, of course, an expert in a different field altogether. He was, of course, the eminent race caller Bill Collins.

For once, the Accurate One was stumped for a line, something he never was while calling the races.

Pommies rolled by Rolf

Rolf Harris wasn’t much of a bloke as it turns out but he did manage to get one over the English press in death.

The Aussie entertainer and pervert’s demise did not become public until Thursday but he’d been dead for almost a fortnight before that.

UK journos had a sniff of what had happened and their inquiries were coming thick and fast as early as May 11.

One Melbourne-based comms boss was fielding questions from them on that night as he tried to enjoy a sophisticated evening of cold beers and NRL footy.

He couldn’t help and it wasn’t until 12 days later that the truth finally got out.

Working blue out west

Rural property holders are fond of giving their blocks names on the front gate: some grandiose or twee, others downright bawdy. Every district has a Bella Vista or a shack dubbed Dunmoochin’

Not so on the west coast of South Australia where a Deadline spy last week noticed a farm which goes by the rather bawdy title of Blow Me Downs.