Deadline: How bullet holes in car boot helped catch a sexual predator

Weeks after a Melbourne cop fired at a fleeing car, a woman was abducted and thrown into the boot of a vehicle. One of the details she could recall — two holes in the boot.

Some 1970s style proactive policing helped catch a sexual predator.

Andrew Rule and Mark Buttler with the latest scallywag scuttlebutt

Straight shooter to the end

When former Victoria Police detective sergeant Steve Gaskin was a young copper in the 1970s he answered a call about a “snowdropper” in Donvale. That’s shorthand, of course, for a sexual deviate who steals women’s underclothes.

Gaskin and his partner chased a Holden Monaro at high speed to the Lilydale area before arresting the man at the wheel. Along the way, Gaskin fired two bullets into the boot of the car.

Nowadays, that sort of proactive policing might lead to more than the Monaro getting the bullet. But things were different then and not much was said about young Gaskin’s itchy trigger finger.

Only weeks later, a woman was thrown into the boot of a car and abducted in the south-eastern suburbs. She was subjected to grotesque sexual violence before being left for dead at a football oval.

One of the details she was able to tell investigators was that there were two holes in the boot. When Gaskin heard that, he twigged that the man whose car he shot and the sex attacker were one and the same.

Monaro man was soon arrested. He was Ian Melrose Pattison, one of the state’s most notorious sex offenders.

Pattison ended up in Pentridge. And the sharp-shooting Gaskin, after years working the southern and south-eastern suburbs, finished his career teaching at the police academy. After he died last month, hundreds gathered for his funeral at the academy, followed by a wake at the nearby Mountain View Hotel.

He was regarded as a dogged investigator and hard worker with the knack of dealing with all types of people.

A former colleague said of the incident of the bullet holes in the boot: “He had a lot of dash and that was an example of it.”

Mick Gatto with old mate Brian “Mickey” Finn.

Vale Mickey Finn

Brian “Mickey” Finn, who left the building last week, had a face that should have been painted for the Archibald Prize and nerve to match. Not that Finn was well-known outside certain circles until well after the controversial shooting of Andrew “Benji” Veniamin at La Porcella restaurant in 2004.

Nine months after Veniamin’s sudden demise, Mick Gatto was on trial for his murder when his old mate Finn came forward with two things to say.

One was that he had been in the restaurant at the time — something several witnesses had forgotten to mention to police. The other was that straight after the backroom confrontation in which Veniamin ran a clear second, Gatto had slipped Mickey Finn a pistol to “hold.”

This was of some consequence. Because the .25 calibre pistol that Finn said Gatto palmed him would be proof that Gatto had been carrying a gun other than the .38 calibre revolver that killed Veniamin.

Gatto killed Andrew Veniamin in self defence.

The defence insisted the .38 revolver was Veniamin’s own gun, wrestled from him by the much bigger Gatto and used in self-defence, whereas the sceptical prosecution argued that the revolver was in fact Gatto’s weapon all along, and part of an execution.

The significance of the .25 pistol was that if Gatto did have it on him that day, it made it seem less likely that the .38 revolver was also his. As prosecutor Geoff Horgan SC put it, “somebody is less likely to have two guns than one”.

So why did Brian Finn wait nine months before mentioning that he was in the restaurant and had kept the Gatto .25 pistol? These are questions that occurred to the sceptical prosecutor, who gave it to him hot and strong in cross examination.

The unflappable Finn said he had originally thought “it would not look good for Mick Gatto” to admit the latter was walking around armed. The real significance of the second gun hit him only later, he said, which eventually prompted him to contact police.

As to prosecution suggestions that Finn wasn’t even in the restaurant that day, the indignant old-timer swore on his daughter’s life that he was.

The jury believed Finn and found Gatto killed Veniamin in self defence, a man who was clearly a treacherous and murderous gun for hire and quite possibly got his just deserts.

Friends of Finn contacted Deadline last week to emphasise how much respect there is for him.

“We loved him,” one heavyweight said.

Most wanted

Talking of old-time crooks, Deadline reader Kristian befriended one at the Olympic Hotel in West Heidelberg a few years ago after offering to help the old geezer operate the TAB betting machine.

They got chatting and it turned out that the old punter was Colin Vincent Stratton, once one of Australia’s top 10 most wanted men and a jailhouse contemporary held in high esteem by the likes of “Chopper” Read and Graham Jensen in the 1970s and 1980s.

Colin Vincent Stratton.

Stratton, by this time dying of stomach cancer, told his new best friend a few stories about the golden era of armed robbery.

By the time the pair took a taxi to the Croxton Park Hotel for another round of cleansing ales, the veteran had confided a supposed detail of the Great Bookie Robbery of 1976. This was the suggestion that the getaway van of cash was driven into a North Melbourne panel beating shop and elevated to ceiling height on a mechanic’s hoist, where it remained until the heat died down.

Who knows, that might even be true.

Stratton’s “most wanted” status followed his escape from the notorious Goulburn jail with some other desperados. He ended up working in the laundry at Pentridge.

Like most of his kind, he died broke.

Meting out justice

Cops out west have a beef with a man who has been flogging cheap meat and a potential dose of salmonella on the street.

He was arrested in Cairnlea last week with lamb, prawns and salmon, allegedly being hawked to the needy and the greedy at discount prices.

The clearly stolen produce appeared to have come from local shops.

The arrested man said he had arranged to sell the meat for $100. Instead, he wound up with a court summons.

The haul of meat being hawked in Cairnlea. Picture: Victoria Police

It may surprise many that shoplifting meat is something of a favourite pastime among those looking for a quick buck.

In the heat of last summer, cuts with lashings of bonus bacteria were being sold on the footpath in the middle of St Albans.

Why anyone would want to buy meat recently shoved down the front of a thief’s pants remains a mystery. Of course, the supermarket chains’ custom of packaging small amounts of meat in individual trays encourages opportunist shoplifters.

Bill and ben, now and then

The story of teenage crooks “Bill and Ben” was recently outlined in some detail in the Sunday Herald Sun.

It traced how the pair graduated from being a frightening armed robbery team as juveniles to being part of the criminal establishment as adults.

Back then, the boys were tight mates but it seems that has changed and that Bill and Ben are no longer on good terms, despite both being involved in the ever-shifting world of Middle Eastern organised crime.

There is talk that friction led to a feud.

Ben has developed into a hired gun and well-connected gangland figure in his own right. And Bill is part of a potent crime gang linked to high-level drug trafficking and crimes of violence.

For now, the score is Love All.

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Dead ringer

Lookalike items in media columns are cheap and lazy, so let’s get started.

One gangland observer and NRL fan claims Sam “The Punisher” Abdulrahim has more than a passing resemblance to New South Wales rugby league player James Tedesco.

Abdulrahim was shot multiple times at a funeral in Fawkner on June 25, a day before Tedesco spent the night blasting through the Queensland defence in State of Origin.

“I wish someone would shoot Tedesco,” one bitter Maroons fan lamented during the match.

Blues star James Tedesco. Picture: Damian Shaw

Sam “The Punisher” Abdulrahim. Picture: Instagram

When words fail

The modern world is full of weasel words.

Deadline noticed another infuriating example last week when a speeding fine (low-range) turned up in the post.

Closer examination showed the wallet-lightening penalty is now known as an “obligation number.”