Deadline: Tributes for old-school cop who brought down blood-spattered killer
Tributes are flowing for a veteran cop who brought down a killer fresh from his brutal crime — still in blood-spattered jeans — in one of the most dramatic moments of his career.
Police & Courts
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When veteran detective Santo Acciarito was farewelled by friends, family and colleagues during the week, stories flowed about his days at the pointy end of law enforcement.
The popular cop worked in Melbourne’s west for many years, mostly at Footscray CIU, where he had plenty of wins at what is traditionally a hectic station.
One of the most dramatic moments of his career came one night in May, 1999, when every cop, chopper and dog available were called to respond to the murder of a local woman.
Carmen Arico had been stabbed in the neck in her front yard in Knight St, Williamstown, at about 10.30pm.
The killer, her estranged husband Domenico, had gone to the scene with the murder weapon in a plastic bag, which also contained salami and bread, apparently an attempt to make the knife seem an innocent possession if he was pulled over en route.
After the most horrific onslaught, he warned a neighbour to “get back or else I’ll have a go at you” and did a runner on foot.
Just after midnight, Detective Acciarito and his colleague Bob Stanwick encountered Arico at the Newport railway station.
The killer, still in blood-spattered jeans, was clearly someone to be approached with caution.
Top Herald Sun news photographer Ian Currie was on the spot as the detectives made the arrest.
New hurdle for stripper banged up abroad
Illegal use of police equipment is probably not high on Matthew Hodder’s list of problems at the minute.
The former Melbourne stripper is banged up in New Zealand on charges of involvement in a high-level cocaine trafficking conspiracy.
Hodder was busted allegedly swimming out to the Spirit of Auckland freighter to retrieve a big shipment of cocaine concealed beneath the vessel’s water line.
Ironically, his vast back catalogue of stripping photos shows him in what resembles a police shirt with what looks even more like Victoria Police insignia on the shoulder.
Those in the know say it is the genuine article. But it’s doubtful Hodder cares given the hurdles he’s facing.
Where do you get a police shirt?
Well, back in the day there was a tailor in the northern suburbs who had the contract to repair and alter police apparel.
A Deadline source known only as The Irishman recalls the business was regularly burgled by crooks looking for genuine copwear for whatever nefarious purpose they had in mind.
Which might strike some as almost humorous, apart from a shocking example of what can happen when criminals dress as police.
When the stone killer Rodney Collins and his equally evil associate, Mark McConville, killed Ramon and Dorothy Abbey at their West Heidelberg house in 1987, the killers were disguised as police.
Collins and McConville shot Ramon Abbey and cut Dorothy’s throat while the couple’s three young children cowered in the house, a crime that would take more than 20 years to solve.
The cause of the murders? A dispute between Collins and Abbey over stolen police badges.
Memo Coen brothers: Meet the Morgan brothers
They say the shortest pitch in Hollywood history was: “Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito … twins”.
That fictitious story of the most unlikely twins of all time was big at the box office. Something which former Herald Sun colleagues Geoff Wilkinson and Ross Brundrett are hoping to do with another pair, these ones from real life.
Not only are Peter Kay Morgan and Doug Kay Morgan twins but they were so identical that as toddlers even their parents sometimes had trouble telling them apart.
The red-haired carpenters grew up to become the “After Dark Bandit”, between them robbing some two dozen banks and TAB agencies around Victoria in a hectic couple of years in which police naturally assumed there was one very busy bandit, not two.
One Morgan would pull a robbery while the other would be seen in another district, which would give the robber twin a flawless alibi. They often hid in the bush and used unusual getaway tactics: once riding bikes down a railway line, hiding a motorbike in a horse float another time, using a canoe to paddle away from a crime scene, even hitch hiking.
These latter day bushrangers were highly successful until, inevitably, they weren’t. That was the day in 1979 when Peter Morgan pushed his luck and shot a country policeman who sprung him robbing a Heathcote bank he’d already stuck up twice before.
Wilkinson, longtime crime reporter, and Brundrett, longtime columnist, nailed the story in their book Double Trouble, which they reckon is an Australian crime yarn with universal appeal.
For scriptwriters, there is not only the ingenious capers the twins devised to stage their getaways, but the fact they actively disliked each other even then — something that dates back to a strange childhood competing for their rogue father’s affections.
Their dad, Kay Morgan, was a skilled but erratic builder with a weakness for gambling, bankruptcy and stealing. Despite a string of mostly undetected crimes from Victoria to New Zealand, Morgan senior wasn’t a member of the underworld and so his boys were “cleanskins” with no criminal record when Peter persuaded Doug to help him pull a robbery at a suburban TAB agency.
Peter, less keen on work and more keen on punting than Doug was, went through cash almost as fast as he could steal it. He lost thousands to bookmakers, had several racehorses in training and had been setting up a legitimate horse-dealing business on a South Gippsland farm by the time a policeman grabbed him in Bendigo the day after the Heathcote debacle.
Peter got on so well with the armed robbery squad detectives that he told them all about brother Doug, who was arrested a few days later. The cops hadn’t noticed that in bank security pictures, sometimes the “after dark bandit” held his gun in the left hand, sometimes in the right.
There’s still no love lost between the twins, now pushing 70.
“Pistol Pete” has been in touch with Deadline lately to say Doug is a glory seeker for co-operating with the book’s authors and for appearing in the Herald Sun recently. He points out that he (Peter) did all but four or five of the “after dark” robberies (so called because they were timed for the end of the business day to ensure a getaway after sunset.)
Doug readily admits he was never as keen on scaring innocent people as his brother was. But he also points out that “shooting a policeman loses you half the population — and lagging loses you the rest.” Ouch.
If and when their story makes it onto the screen, don’t expect the Morgans to sit together at the premiere.
Heroin HQ a trap for the unwary
Let the buyer beware, something the new owner of the house at 7 Bostock Ave. in Manifold Heights would know. That being the address where a previous heroin-dealing owner had set dangerous and illegal mantraps.
As the Herald Sun revealed last month, police had seized the then home of veteran Geelong drug trafficker Zeth Samios after a protracted court fight.
The confiscation was carried out because the property was linked to his criminal offending.
It was sold this month for $865,000 after a legal tussle that began in 2018.
The man traps Samios had installed to deter police and any unwanted criminal intruders were apparently not included in the list of chattels and fittings. A pity, perhaps, as they surely would have discouraged burglars.
Razor wire had been installed to slice up anyone climbing the fence and rows of 10cm spikes surrounded around the house itself. Further proof that Australia is a great destination for an enterprising criminal prepared to work hard to get ahead.
Breaking bad (and teeth)
A Deadline associate has been in the United States where he came across an interesting bag of confectionery.
It’s a Breaking Bad style lolly, created in the same colour as drug cook Walter White’s supercharged brand of meth.
Deadline being dedicated to research, we’ve tried these lollies and can report that they won’t fry your brain like White’s product but they may well rot your teeth.
Whether such stuff would sell well on this side of the Pacific is hard to say, but there is no doubt that authorities who can’t beat outlaws trafficking illicit drugs would take great delight in outlawing lollies that look like illicit drugs.
All of which is a reminder that it’s a long time since authorities banned the sale of “Fags” here. As possibly no one under the age of 40 would know, Fags were a delicious sugary treat shaped like a cigarette so kiddies could prepare for a life on the lung-busters.
All aboard with outboard
A police source had an understated response to this abandoned Mercury outboard motor being found on a suburban train last week.
“You don’t see it every day,” he muttered astutely.
Alert protective services officers saw some dodgy-looking teens boarding a train at Mordialloc station so they radioed ahead to Kananook.
When their counterparts there got on, the bad boys jumped off, minus the Mercury.
It turned out the motor had been stolen from a boat moored in Mordialloc Creek.
Inquiries are continuing.
For whom the wedding bell tolls
It’s congratulations to the unflappable production whiz who pulls this column together every week, among many other duties.
How he has even found time to lift his head from the keyboard is a mystery, but fresh evidence suggests he has done exactly that.
In a covert operation that the police witness protection program might like to study for pointers, he quietly married his gun reporter colleague on the weekend and escaped to New York for five weeks.
It will be a nice break from making Deadline presentable and legally safe for public consumption.
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Tributes flow for young girl killed in horror buggy crash
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