Deadline: Knife-wielding nudist haunts western suburbs sauna

Saunas are usually places where one can find relaxation and rejuvenation, not a scene straight from a Halloween movie.

There’s nothing relaxing about being confronted by a knife-wielding nudist at a sauna.

Andrew Rule and Mark Buttler with the latest scallywag scuttlebutt.

Naked knife-wielding mudwoman’s steamy scene

Saunas are supposed to be relaxing places for muscles and mind to recover in a hot fog of water vapour.

It didn’t go that way recently at a western suburbs steam room where an innocent fellow was sweating away peacefully when a naked woman appeared on the scene.

Naked, that is, except that she was covered head-to-toe in mud and tattoos. And she was carrying a knife.

“She was covered in more mud than a Golem … stark-naked and packing a shiv,” a Deadline source said later.

The weird situation turned ugly when the mud woman waved the knife around and threatened the alarmed man’s life.

The sauna client was sweating bullets, an ordeal ended by a quick staff response and the arrival of police.

Officers took mud woman away to a secure place … somewhere she could let off steam.

Not a mafia torch this time

When the Kilmore stables of the extended Burnett-Mifsud harness racing family burned down last July, killing 12 horses, the response of fellow horse people was instant, generous and heartwarming.

An appeal raised more than $100,000 within days, with offers of feed, harness and other equipment to help the popular harness clan.

Outsiders might have wondered at first if the fire could have been sinister, given things that have happened in harness racing in the past.

Exactly 33 years ago this month, there was another fire in another harness stable in which another 12 horses were burned alive. That happened at the stables of the late Gordon Turner at Officer on October 16, 1989.

Unlike the Kilmore fire, the Turner stable fire was suspicious from the start. Investigators found that “an accelerant” such as petrol had been squirted onto the horses as well as into the stable bedding before being ignited, an evil act by any measure.

The remains of the stables of harness racing trainer Gordon Turner in October 1989.

Turner, a gruff and independent figure, had refused demands by organised crime race fixers to “hand over the lead” in certain races. His family understood immediately that the fire was a punishment for him — and a warning to others not to defy the bad guys.

Turner’s wife June saw a man in a beanie near the boundary of the property not long before the fire broke out, and the family has always suspected a well-known driver of being involved.

A harness horse owner with (as it turned out) strong mafia links stayed away from Turner’s funeral, as did others who knew they would not be welcome — although mafiosi flocked to Vin Knight’s funeral at Kilmore after he shot himself in 1991.

Police traced the arson plot to a “godfather” figure near Mildura but the investigation sputtered out.

None of which, it seems, has anything to do with what happened at Kilmore this year. The police, harness racing stewards and the Burnetts and Mifsuds are completely satisfied that the fire started with a faulty battery in a radio left in the stable overnight in early July.

Stables, of course, are fire traps because they are usually full of straw and hay or other flammable material. They also attract rats, which are notorious for starting fires by chewing electrical wiring and building nests of dry material.

Locally, there is no whisper of scandal or scuttlebutt. And there is absolutely no hint of an “inside job”, as it seems beyond belief that anyone would burn alive the horses in their care. No one who knows the people concerned could imagine that, let alone suggest it.

If the faulty radio battery is the culprit, it is further proof that radios and stables do not mix, a belief shared by some horse trainers. The late Tommy Smith hated any radios in his stables. So does his modern-day counterpart Chris Waller.

If there is an amusing side to arson involving animals, it happened in an inner Melbourne suburb some years ago.

An apparently unprofitable business sitting on valuable real estate (not far from a couple of racecourses, incidentally) went up in flames rather conveniently. The story goes that the pet cockatoo who lived in a cage on the premises happened to be taken elsewhere hours before the fire erupted.

The lucky cocky lived happily long after a profitable new building rose from the ashes.

Wedding bells ahoy!

Who is the gangland tough-guy set to tie the knot in the very near future?

All concerned will be hoping the big day isn’t followed by a stint in the Big House over some outstanding matters.

Obesitiality? Fat shaming a bulldog

Cheryl the bulldog is making a strong recovery after the RSPCA was forced to intervene in an unusual case of animal neglect.

Normally, the inspectors are called in when animals are being starved to the point of death. But things had gone in the opposite direction in Cheryl’s case.

Inspectors found her in such an overweight state that her ribs and spine were not visible and could not be felt beneath Michelin Man rolls of fat.

She had trouble waddling around and carried a golf ball-sized growth on her front leg that hadn’t been treated.

With Cheryl at least 50 per cent heavier than her ideal weight, things were looking pretty bleak for a while. But the RSPCA reports that the overstuffed bulldog is on the right track.

“To ensure appropriate care, including correct diet and proper exercise, Cheryl went into loving foster care where she started to lose weight, allowing her to be more physically active and live a healthy, happy life,” an RSPCA statement said. Woof.

Cheryl was more than double the weight of an average dog of her breed. Picture: RSPCA Victoria

Crim got behind the news

Lidia Thorpe’s bikie boyfriend brouhaha brought to mind the case of a very public figure’s brush with some rough trade.

As Deadline recalls, the television news broadcaster concerned was seated next to a notorious organised crime figure on a flight to Melbourne years ago.

It seems rough can be smooth. She fell for his dubious charms and was straight off the plane and back to his place for what, we can only surmise, was a broad range of recreational activities.

Problem was, the crim was a cocaine dealer under police surveillance and would later end up with a big price on his head from other crooks.

It was probably just as well for the television identity that she put the fling behind her.

Time to turn over a new leaf

A fight game figure has copped another nasty kick in the orchestras.

Deadline mentioned some time ago that he had earned the ire of some heavy gangland figures with intemperate comments.

That lapse led to an ignominious social media back down designed to keep the peace.

This time, he’s allegedly been busted growing a heap of cannabis at his house.

Let’s hope, for his sake, bad things don’t come in threes.