Deadline | Melbourne crime news: Killer Vincent O’Dempsey’s horror paint job

If you’re unlucky enough to hire Australia’s worst stone-cold killer to paint your house, don’t expect a good job. Andrew Rule and Mark Buttler with the latest crime buzz.

Vincent O’Dempsey‘s tortured side hustle has been revealed.

Melbourne’s top crime writers Andrew Rule and Mark Buttler with their weekly dose of scallywag scuttlebutt.

COLOUR-BLIND KILLER

Vincent O’Dempsey is the worst stone-cold killer in Australian history, counting Ivan Milat.

The hatchet-faced hit man and psychopath will die in jail, and the sooner the better. He was finally convicted in 2017 with another man, Garry Dubois, of the abduction murders of Brisbane woman Barbara McCulkin and her two young daughters Vicki and Leanne, in 1974.

He is still being investigated for what is touted as Australia’s oldest active cold case, the murder of one Vincent Allen in 1964 in the Queensland town of Warwick.

A court sketch of Garry Dubois and Vincent O’Dempsey on trial.

Vincent O’Dempsey in police custody in 2019. Picture: Glenn Hunt

Allen’s body is reputedly hidden inside the concrete wall of the Leslie Dam, which was being built at the time. Oddly enough, or not, O’Dempsey and Allen had both worked at the construction site.

O’Dempsey, now 80, is believed to have killed more than 30 people over 60 years, including several women picked up at random.

There aren’t many funny stories in a monster like that, but underworld identities remark that apart from being deadly, O’Dempsey is also colour blind.

In between performing hits for money and other criminal enterprises, he has maintained a facade of normal work.

One of his casual jobs was with a former jailmate and armed robber — “Gary”, real-life stepfather of a best-selling author — in a house painting business.

Barbara McCulkin and her daughters Vicki and Leanne disappeared in 1974.

One day, the boss sent O’Dempsey to do some “touch ups” at a freshly painted house.

The house owner immediately complained that it looked terrible.

Gary went to the house and found that the brown wall had been daubed with spots of pink paint.

“It looked like a (expletive) leopard!” he confided later.

O’Dempsey, subject of a chilling book (The Night Dragon) by our Brisbane colleague Matt Condon, spooked even hardened criminals with his habit of reading the personal columns in the newspapers, looking for “lonely hearts” to target.

He was a predator in every sense.

But, in the end, it was one of the many women who feared him who finally had the courage to testify about his murderous boasts.

ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL

Great news last week when missing 87-year-old couple Otto and Gerda from Bentleigh turned up safe and well after some kind of road trip.

At least the matter was resolved without things escalating a lot further, which was what happened many years ago when two much-loved elderly parents were missing without warning.

The early signs were not good.

Homicide squad detectives and forensic investigators converged on their property, along with a hefty media contingent.

The lead investigator, who had dropped his other work at St Kilda Rd and taken the long drive to the scene, was inside the house about to address the media when there was an unexpected development.

The “murdered” couple cruised up the driveway in their van after returning from an unannounced trip.

It would be an understatement to say our normally urbane senior sergeant lost his composure.

Otto and Gerda turned up safe and well.

SPOONMAN

Which former policeman’s name is being spoonerised to make some forthright points on online forums?

Is it the detective himself who’s making his point known … or just some other dever click?

His first name is Tennis and his second should be Racket.

COURT CUTS SHORT CURLY

The old television industry maxim goes that every microphone should be treated as being switched on and the same could probably apply in our courts.

Eagle-eyed Herald Sun reporter Ashley Argoon was in Melbourne Magistrates’ Court last week when a defendant known only as Curly went full Ian Chappell.

With an open Department of Justice mic and a phone call going at the same time, Curly made it clear to all assembled that these were troubled times.

“What’s it about? What’s it about — money? I’ve got shit up the river. I’m not in a position to be doing any deals or structures. No-one wants to pay. Everyone wants to lend, no-one wants to pay. I’ve just got to pull my head in,” he shouted into his headset.

About a dozen people heard the lot before a police officer stepped in and called out: “Curly, turn your mic off”.

He did not and was only silenced by a court mute button.

The daughter of the former judge had no use for masks. Picture: David Caird

FINE FOR SOME

The daughter of a former judge has passed a guilty verdict on the state’s lockdown laws — putting her money where her mouth is by refusing to pay big fines imposed for flouting them.

The woman concerned was pinged a couple of times, including at least once when attending a rally a long way from home at a time when law-abiding Victorians were confined to quarters.

Locals also noted her refusal to wear a mask in shops among other breaches of the law, ethical behaviour and etiquette.

THANKS … ER, I THINK

At a recent court hearing a barrister in full court regalia had accidentally made the Golden Gate Bridge his background on the webcam. He couldn’t work out how to take it down and then the accused — an alleged child sex offender with an IT background — stepped in to counsel him how to remove it from the screen.

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