Deadline: Peter Dupas, Ashley Coulston facing off in epic prison Scrabble games

Two of Victoria’s most loathed killers share a passion in prison — but it isn’t as depraved as you might imagine.

The killers’ Scrabble matches are deadly serious.

Mark Buttler and Andrew Rule with the latest crime buzz.

Killers in on the tiles

Two of Australia’s most loathed characters share a passion — but it isn’t as sick as might be imagined.

Scrabble is their thing. Deadline sources say lifers Peter Norris Dupas and Ashley Mervyn Coulston, the triple killer who also likes a triple-word score, have spent years duking it out in marathon jailhouse matches.

The pair go head-to-head daily, testing their word skills behind the walls of the Hopkins Correctional Centre, near Ararat, in western Victoria.

They are said to take the matches seriously. No wonder, given the relatively high stakes involved.

Our source says the loser of each Coulston v Norris scrabble showdown must make the winner a cup of tea from the kitchen shared with another triple killer, the gender-fluid monster once known as Paul Charles Denyer.

Peter Dupas is led into the Supreme Court.

Coulston and Dupas are regarded as model prisoners who know how the system works, causing zero trouble and fronting up for muster on time, every time.

They are regarded as “self-sufficient”, making no unnecessary work for the staff.

“They (staff) don’t want people coming up asking them a million questions,” our spy says.

Coulston and Dupas have not always been so civil.

Dupas was a scourge on women in Victoria for decades, committing murders and rapes on his way to criminal infamy.

In 1992, Coulston cold-bloodedly murdered three young people after responding to their newspaper classified advertisement looking for a fourth housemate.

Ashley Coulston murdered three young people who were searching for a roommate.

Games, hobbies and obsessions are part of prison life. The story of the Birdman of Alcatraz, Robert Franklin Stroud, made it onto the silver screen the year before Stroud died in 1963. The multiple murderer, who spent 54 years in jail, mostly in solitary confinement, reared and sold birds and became a respected ornithologist. But mostly in Leavenworth Prison, not Alcatraz.

Our very own favourite bent cop Roger “The Dodger” Rogerson once got his psychiatrist to try to persuade a sceptical judge Rogerson was showing signs of dementia and severe depression.

The judge thought Roger was bluffing and sent him to a rural rehabilitation retreat, otherwise known as a prison. Amazingly, or not, within weeks Rogerson made such a complete recovery he became the jail’s sudoku champion. He was also excellent at crosswords and cards.

Cuffs too rough for tough

He’s a heavy crime player with strong links to the upper echelon of Melbourne’s underworld, rubbing shoulders with mafia bosses, bikies and ruthless middle-eastern organised crime figures.

Much of his recent history has been spent behind bars in maximum security prisons among the toughest of the tough.

So, it was something of a turn-up when he was reduced to tears recently.

The reason: one of his jailhouse hosts put on his handcuffs too tight.

The cuffs were a bit tight for a notorious Melboure tough guy.

Junior crims … no kidding

There’s plenty of debate about raising the age of criminal responsibility in Victoria.

It will go from age 10 to 12 next year and, if the original plan stays in place, jump to 14 in three years time.

Some observers point out that losing the power to arrest these age groups comes at a time of rampant and rising crime by teenagers.

Frontline police say they aren’t interested in throwing children in jail willy nilly but that many young offenders might benefit from a stern word about the seriousness of, for example, carrying out aggravated burglaries on families in the ‘burbs.

One former copper last week pondered what proponents of the new plan would have made of things four decades ago.

He pointed out to us last week that when he joined the force back then, the age of criminal responsibility was even lower than it is now.

“If you could prove they had planned it or had a guilty mind, you could charge an eight-year-old.”

Spanian goes Tasmanian

After escaping unscathed during recent tours into the ’hoods of Dandenong and Melton, rapper Spanian has met his match in the Apple Isle.

The New South Wales prisoner-turned-performer was reportedly arrested by Tasmanian police in Bridgewater after allegedly inciting a “significant disturbance” during a meet and greet down south.

Police on Saturday charged the 38-year-old after his actions allegedly resulted in a “significant number of people congregating” in Hobart, where things really revved up.

The crowd took part in hooning activities which left a police vehicle badly damaged.

All of which suggests Spanian will be answering to his real name in Hobart in July when he appears at the Magistrates’ Court there.

Deadline suggests that the name in his passport is Anthony Lees. That’s if he has a passport.

Getting the hang of the interweb thang

A Melbourne magistrate got quite the surprise to see a waiting defendant appear on a video link smoking a cigarette at the weekend.

The woman, sporting a black three-stripe tracksuit top, a cigarette in her right hand and a phone in her left, quickly killed her computer’s camera when she realised she was on show in the court.

It’s best to wait until you’re in the courtroom, not outside on the street, before flicking the webcam on. What some might call a trap for old players.

Another trap is for magistrates who lose track.

When there was a media application for a hearing into a bloody home invasion last week, magistrate Gregory Robinson was blown away at the interest in the story.

“Oh my goodness, it must be a slow news day,” he scoffed as he powered through the defendant’s hearing.

Clearly, he hadn’t flicked on the nightly TV news or read our yarn that day detailing a heroic neighbour’s actions to save a five-year-old boy from the chaos.

Cole’s funny picture book — not

Once upon a time there was a children’s book called the Cole’s Funny Picture Book. First produced in Melbourne in 1879, its new annual editions sold in huge numbers until 1918.

It was full of Victorian-era puzzles, stories, poems, jokes and corny humour, and was the brainchild of E.W. Cole, a member of the famous retailing family.

Now, another Cole is having a bash at the book writing business. That being Neil Cole, a lawyer, former parliamentarian and occasional playwright who can afford to dabble in one of the least financially rewarding hobbies there is to fill in his days.

And the result ain’t no funny picture book. Cole has looked back over his time as a community legal service lawyer battling against all forms of injustice, especially the railroading of young tearaways for offences they didn’t do or might not have done.

The resulting 35 stories, collected under the snappy title “Trials and Tribulations in Community Law” were launched last week by one-time Essendon ruckman Simon Madden at the State Library.

Cole has always been a humble, gentle sort of geezer, but he’s doing this book thing in serious style.

Apart from getting Madden to do the launch, Cole has recruited top line communications expert Rick Willis to handle the publicity.

Which is appropriate, as it happens.

These days, Willis flits from meeting to meeting with captains of industry and influential political and media contacts.

But time was when Rick was a gritty crime reporter who covered gritty crimes. He’s one of the few still around who rushed to the scene of the Great Bookie Robbery at the Victorian Club in 1976.

In fact, he has his page one bylined story of the bookie robbery framed and hanging in his study, which might be why his daughter Matisse now wants to be a reporter like him. And her mum, for that matter.