Deadline: Randy’s sad demise at hands of bungling killers

Late staffy cross Randy proved true an old adage in a recent Melbourne home invasion — if you want a loyal friend, get a dog.

Mark Buttler and Andrew Rule with the latest crime buzz.

Randy gone, not forgotten

It’s often said that if you want a loyal friend, get a dog.

Deadline this week heard the old saying was exemplified back in February when armed thugs stormed a home in Carmichael Drive, Wyndham Vale.

It was a terrifying confrontation in which shots were fired and Atem Atem, 29, and Ayuel Akuei, 22, were left dead and a third man was wounded.

There have subsequently been questions about why the killers felt it necessary to also shoot Randy the dog early that morning.

The answer is that Randy, the household canine believed to be a staffy cross, decided to take action against the intruders and was killed for doing so.

Word is that an impressive shrine has been set up honouring his bravery.

Family set up a vigil for Atem Atem, Ayuel Akuei and Randy. Picture: Mark Stewart

Meanwhile, police appear to be making headway in the hunt for the killers, who are believed to have been looking for someone else when they arrived in a three-car convoy to carry out their evil deed.

Eight men and a teenager — ranging in age from 17 to 22 — have been arrested over the fatal shootings following the months-long manhunt.

The men were interviewed by police and released pending further inquiries.

Whoever carried out the crime joins a long line of imbeciles who have gone out tooled-up with one target in mind and ended up killing someone else.

Investigators believe men caught on CCTV in two cars later that morning may be able to help their inquiry, but they have proved elusive.

One of the vehicles was at a service station and the other at a fast-food drive through.

Apparently, shooting the wrong victim is hungry work.

Anyone with information can call Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000 or visit the website www.crimestoppers.com.au.

Raunchy Roberta gets risque (again)

Age shall not weary Roberta Williams’s penchant for getting her gear off, although gravity can have a tendency to interfere with the naked human body.

The gangland widow has gamely posed up all over again, this time in a beaded bikini, in her latest revealing shoot aimed at attracting more eyeballs.

“Come sub to my OF (Only Fans). YOU WON’T BE DISAPPOINTED,” she promises in a cheeky teaser alongside the bikini pic.

By our calculations, it’s now 15 years since Williams first stripped off for the cameras with a photo spread in the late, lamented lads’ mag, Ralph.

Some readers might recall that Ralph went to the big magazine stand in the sky exactly 13 years ago in June 2010.

Ralph’s last issue featured one Clare Werbeloff wearing some flimsy lingerie. If that name sounds as vaguely familiar as, say, Helen D’Amico*, it’s because scallywag Clare made herself a seven-day internet wonder with her bogus “eyewitness” account of a shooting outside a Kings Cross nightclub in 2009.

Chk Chk Boom Girl Clare Werbeloff was the final Ralph cover girl.

Roberta Williams spruiking her Only Fans account.

Her delightfully politically incorrect description (to a delighted TV cameraman) punctuated with excellent DYI sound effects (“Chk-Chk, Boom!”) earned her the sobriquet of “Kings Cross Bogan.”

Sadly, it was too good to be true. An older and wiser Clare is now allegedly a speech therapist, and long ago conceded that “Chk-Chk, Boom!” was all a bit of an off-the-cuff joke. In what we call the streaker’s defence, it seemed a good idea at the time.

We wish the widow Williams all the best with her courageous public battle against gravity. She has always conducted herself politely with Deadline. Which is just as well, because we noted the robust way she punched on with another female mourner at the funeral of her father-in-law George.

If the swimwear modelling doesn’t work out, she could try a prelim bout at the boxing. Promoters love novelty acts.

*Helen D’Amico was the streaker who embarrassed league football’s quietest, shyest and baldest man, Bruce Doull, in the 1982 Grand Final between Carlton and Richmond. Apparently, it seemed a good idea at the time.

Frightening? you can bank on it

There was plenty of feedback to a Sunday Herald Sun piece on how bulletproof shutters hastened the end of the hell-raising era of Australian armed robbery.

Reader comments under the story gave a taste of what it was like to be on the other side of the counter in those times.

A former bank employee called Megan recalled being held up twice in the 1970s and 1980s while working for the State Bank.

“Twas the scariest thing for me to go through as an 18-year-old and second robbery, I was 25. Will never forget.”

Another contributor said her mother was the teller in one of the interstate jobs pictured in the weekend read.

“She never got over it and has impacted the rest of her life,” Steve said.

Many bank tellers were left traumatised from the heyday of robberings in the 1970s and 80s. Picture: Supplied

Vicky was a victim in 1989.

“I remember every minute but I’m lucky and was provided counselling and can forget about it. I know a few who struggled.”

Former teller RJ said the screens were a safety game-changer but came with one unintended risk. They could hurt innocent staff members just as easily as crooks.

Veteran crime reporters recall cases where bank staff were paid significant amounts of damages because they were injured by the potentially-fatal shutters. Tellers used to worry about members of the public taking risks by being too close to the shutters.

“The only issue I used to stress about,” wrote RJ, “was when mums used to bring their kids and you had to tell them to not put the kids on the counter as they used to like to get a teller stamp on their hand.

“These things went up faster than you could blink and with significant force.”

Thanks and goodbye to Marty Allison

It turns out that the ever-youthful looking policeman Marty Allison has, in fact, been having birthdays each year just like everyone else. Which is why the day finally came last Friday when he handed in his “Freddie” and co-starred at his own farewell turn at Spencer St HQ.

It was there, in front of some peers and senior officers and his family, that Assist. Comm. Mick Frewen took the chance to remind the gathering that when the fresh faced Allison entered the academy in 1980, Malcolm Fraser was PM, Azaria Chamberlain had just gone missing and AC/DC’s Bon Scott heading for the Big Sleep.

Apart from the usual nice stuff, Frewen also made a point of apologising to Allison and to his guest, fellow former homicide detective Paul Newman, for the way they were treated over their hard-at-it investigation of foul play by other police 20 years ago.

Marty, as he’s known to a lot of coppers and footballers, did the usual round of suburban posts before switching to the drug squad then homicide.

After working at Moonee Ponds he was twice brought back to homicide in the late 1990s, in part to help with the thankless and potentially dangerous task of probing the dark doings of disgraced police sergeant Denis Tanner and his cronies in the force.

There is no need to detail all Tanner’s alleged wrongdoings here. Suffice to say that coroner Graeme Johnstone found he shot his sister-in-law Jennifer Tanner to death at Bonnie Doon in 1984, when she was found with two bullet wounds to her brain and to her hands.

Allison and Newman worked with a handful of other police to investigate whether certain members had conspired to cover up for Tanner — and if they did so because Tanner could incriminate others in the 1978 death of transsexual St Kilda sex worker Adele Bailey, whose skeleton was found in an abandoned mineshaft next to the Tanner family farm at Bonnie Doon in 1995.

The full backstory of those two deaths, added to the fact the force has formally apologised to both Allison and Newman, is a story for another time.

Let’s say that apart from his work in “the job”, Allison has been a valued football mentor to young players at the Calder Cannons and lately as coach of Strathmore.

In the end, from football field to force field, it seems he was a good team player. Unlike some of those he investigated.

Two other points from Friday.

One is that among the Allison family was his daughter Georgie with her new triplet sons, seen by their grandfather as a dynamite AFL centre line in 2043.

The other point is that jailed drug baron Tony Mokbel was referenced when Frewen quoted a taped conversation in which Mokbel growled: ‘ … that (expletive deleted) Marty Allison, he is too (expletive deleted) dumb along with all the other cops to get it right.’

Frewen commented: “Fast forward to today, Marty. I think you got it pretty right … Tony Mokbel is there and you are here.”

Hercule Poirot has inspired a Victorian prisoner to up his grooming game.

Crap idea has whiskers on it

Getting good grooming products can be something of an issue for residents of our state’s jails.

They can be prohibitively expensive and, occasionally, make the owner the target of standover work.

One inmate has overcome this problem with his own concoction of styling products, blended in a kind of unique homemade fashion.

He’s been using it to keep his moustache looking impeccable, a little after the manner of the BBC version of Hercule Poirot.

Unfortunately, it’s at the expense of any notion of good hygiene. You don’t really want to know what substances he mixes up.