Deadline: Parole board facing hard call on future of Gavin Preston

There’s plenty of furrowed brows ahead for those who will soon make a call on the freedom of a true gangland wildman.

Gavin Preston arrives at Supreme Court. Picture: Hamish Blair

Mark Buttler and Andrew Rule with the latest crime buzz.

Cell call on Gav

Plenty of furrowed brows ahead for those who soon have to make the call on the future of gangland wildman Gavin Preston.

According to Deadline’s mental arithmetic, Preston’s maximum prison term over the shooting of drug dealer Adam Khoury will expire next autumn.

Preston, who also goes by the nickname “Capable” (as in capable of anything), has applied for parole and this is being considered. Parole would at least impose a period in which he would be under stringent conditions.

Authorities are mindful of other special provisions which can cramp the style of criminals even after their maximum sentences expire. Preston definitely qualifies as worth keeping an eye on.

Gavin Preston (left) in prison with a fellow inmate.

In happier news, Preston — who has spent most of his adult life behind bars — will turn 50 this Friday.

It’s a special date he shares with arch-enemy and fellow jailbird Christopher Dean Binse, along with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, possibly the most agreeable and sane of the three, though not as amusing as Binse.

Only the most wildly optimistic would expect to see any happy snaps of Binse and Preston together as the latter brings up his half-ton.

They are sworn enemies and would probably rather blow the other’s brains out than blow out birthday candles this week.

Christopher Dean Binse gives some feedback to a photographer.

Binse was a mate of Khoury, who was shot dead by Preston in what a court later found was a case of self-defence.

Preston was investigated but never charged over the 2011 ambush of former bikie strongman Toby Mitchell in front of the Bandidos MC clubhouse in Brunswick.

Binse was perhaps keener than the police, and unhampered by legal and ethical worries.

He used a vehicle tracker to follow Preston around town with quite some malicious intent, but obviously didn’t get a clear shot.

Mark of the beast

Jaimes Sutton started last week as just another man police wish to speak to whose face tattoos were going to make it hard to dodge the fuzz forever.

By the end of it, he was an international online sensation, even featuring in the venerable New York Post.

Police on the Victoria-New South Wales border had been looking for the highly-colourised Sutton over charges including domestic violence assault and property damage.

They were at something of an advantage because his entire face is covered with tattoos — including the word “beast” on his forehead.

Jaimes Sutton was on the run from police. Picture: Murray Police

Sutton became an international online sensation. Picture: Facebook

The Post remarked that the search for Sutton would not be like finding a needle in a haystack, leaving it to Facebook users to roast the cops.

“I don’t think I’d recognise him if I passed him in the street,” one poster joked.

“Keep your eyes open for this man. He’ll be extremely hard to spot in a crowd,” another joker posted.

The Sutton alert was featured in something called Warrant Wednesday, posted weekly by local police along the Murray.

Women in the area have lightheartedly labelled it “Tinder Day” because of the cavalcade of eligible (and ineligible) bachelors it features.

“Check out Jaimes Sutton and his tasteful tatts!!!!” one thirsty lady blurted last week. It’s possible she was joking.

Lucky rob runs second to another scam

Quotable and notable Queensland horse trainer Rob Heathcote has plenty of luck — of both sorts.

The man who trained ace sprinter Buffering now has Rothfire, the Cinderella horse they’re calling “the thriller from Chinchilla”.

After a blazing start to his career, Rothfire was injured in 2020 and missed a lot of racing, which was bad luck. But he recovered to make a successful comeback against all odds, which was wonderful luck because he has now won north of a million dollars and could win a lot more.

All of which more than makes up for the fact that Heathcote had to pay for the horse twice due to an internet banking scam, which was a stroke of bad luck.

It happened back when Rothfire was an unknown and unfashionable youngster in a paddock at Chinchilla, and Heathcote agreed to pay his breeders a bargain $10,000 for him.

Trainer Rob Heathcote with multiple Group 1 winner Buffering, who is enjoying retirement. Picture: Trenton Akers

When he got what looked like a genuine invoice for that amount he immediately transferred the money … only to get the real invoice a few days later. You don’t have to be told: the first 10 grand went to somewhere like Nigeria, to people who’d hacked into Heathcote’s system and composed a fake invoice using untraceable bank account details.

It seems lightning strikes twice. Because now, Heathcote says, scammers have got him again — this time it was over the purchase of a Mercedes car. The short version of a long story is that he paid for the car — and again the money was diverted to an exotic location by digital bandits.

Then there was Heathcote’s expensive brush with stewards earlier this year when they fined him $34,000 for administering a recently-banned drug to his horses.

There was no secret about it: each dose of the once-respectable drug Hemoplex was carefully noted and signed off in his official stable treatment book. Trouble was that Hemoplex had been banned a few months earlier because it contained tiny traces of cobalt.

Still, there’s nothing to stop Heathcote’s new champ Rothfire winning another million dollars this season. Except luck, of course.

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No business like horse show business

Allegations of skulduggery aren’t limited to horse and greyhound racing. The “showies” in the pony club set have their own worries but the scandal has been kept quiet so far, which is making honest horse people froth at the bit.

A Parliamentary inquiry into a contract to resurface two arenas at the Sydney International Equestrian Centre has found the tender process run by the Office of Sport was flawed and that “robust probity standards” were missing.

It also found that the chief executive of Equestrian NSW, Bruce Farrar, should have foreseen that his involvement in the tender process would throw up a perceived or actual conflict of interest, and that this conflict should have been disclosed.

A report states concerns that the evidence of Farrer and two other witnesses to the inquiry may put them in breach of the Crimes Act and should be referred to police.

The report recommends that NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption consider reopening its investigation into how the contract was won — and who benefited.

The whole thing sounds like an episode from the cracker satire The Games, written by the late John Clarke and his collaborator, the reclusive Ross Campbell, before the Sydney Olympics.

Smith ploughed his Jaguar into a family home in Hawthorn.

Time to mend fences

Kerb-mounting Kew MP Tim Smith is attacking the media again, this time blasting 3AW host Neil Mitchell.

A Deadline spy suggests the former shadow attorney-general might be better off turning his attention to a pressing local issue.

That is the eyesore “temporary” structure, covered in graffiti, which has become something of a Hawthorn landmark since Smith crashed into the Power St family’s fence on Derby Day last year.

Smith blew .131 when he caught up with police. Medical experts warn that alcohol abuse can lead to brain damage and erratic behaviour.

Out of the frying pan

Poor choice of options from a bloke who T-boned a car in the CBD one day last week.

The fellow decided to do the Dandy Dollar Dash and sprinted into a nearby building.

Deadline’s Latrobe St spy said it was not the best of choices because his hideaway was the Australian Federal Police headquarters.

He was promptly arrested. Police reportedly later found samurai swords in his damaged car.