Deadline: Ringtone interrupts accused killer Greg Lynn’s hearing
Accused high country killer Greg Lynn is facing a high-stakes hearing but the tension in the courtroom was momentarily shattered by Freddie Mercury.
Police & Courts
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Andrew Rule and Mark Buttler with the latest scallywag scuttlebutt.
Detective under pressure
The committal hearing this week over the high country murders of Russell Hill and Carol Clay shapes as one of the high-stakes cases of the year.
Melbourne Magistrates’ Court must decide whether former Jetstar pilot Greg Lynn should be sent for trial before a Supreme Court jury.
But one seasoned detective broke the tension momentarily on Monday when the Queen song “Somebody to Love” inexplicably started blasting from his phone.
As if that wasn’t tricky enough, the investigator’s repeated attempts to shut down Freddie Mercury’s band failed dismally.
It was only when he made a hasty exit from the courtroom that the critical incident was resolved.
“Let’s hope he’s quicker with a gun,” one observer remarked this week.
Eloise Worledge case revisited
The Eloise Worledge mystery still unsettles those who remember the shock of the eight-year-old vanishing from her parents’ Beaumaris house between midnight and dawn on January 13, 1976.
One of the more disturbing facts to emerge in recent years is that up to four teachers at the Beaumaris state school that Eloise attended have since been accused of child sex abuse in other cases.
Several former Beaumaris students, now middle-aged, have reported abuse to police and some have briefed lawyers to represent them.
In the most high-profile case of several, journalist Russell Jackson has told the terrible story of star footballer Rod Owen, whose brilliant career with St Kilda was cut short by the self-destructive behaviour that came from trying to blot out the abuse suffered from Beaumaris school librarian and sports coach Darrell Ray and volunteer football official (and St Kilda life member) Albert Briggs, who managed the Saints Little League team coached by Ray.
Deadline has spoken to other former pupils who attended the school in the 1970s at the same time as Eloise Worledge. They confirm that Ray, since prosecuted, was not the only offender on the staff.
The original investigation of the abduction was blighted by shoddy police work but a painstaking review in 2001 and 2002 (to prepare for an inquest) appeared to rule out Ray or other known deviates in the area.
A new generation of investigators agreed with their 1970s predecessors that the only known suspect who fitted the facts was Eloise’s father Lindsay Worledge, who was bitterly estranged from his wife Patsy and resented the fact she was forcing him to leave the family to make way for her lover, a sneaky senior workmate of Lindsay’s much disliked by other family members.
What investigators did not do for the coroner is to question the behaviour of a police inspector who had been recorded on a covert listening device placed in the Worledge house.
According to police who were later told about the incident during detective training, the chirpy officer was recorded singing “What A Wonderful World” in the bathroom after an intimate encounter with Patsy Worledge. The moral of the training lecture was to beware of listening devices.
Straight outta mongolia
It’s a case of being lost in translation.
Deadline was chasing up some old stories about last year’s Mongol bikie gang split when one headline on the issue, from a website called wstpost.com, caught the eye.
It read strangely, as if written by a robot: “More elderly motorcyclists ousted from Mongolian outlaw motorcycling club over power struggle.”
It seems the original description of the ousted bikies as “senior” was translated as “elderly” and that the gang’s name was interpreted as meaning they were from a country to the north of China.
Pictured beneath the wstpost.com item were former Mongols strongmen Mark Balsillie and Toby Mitchell, both robust shooting survivors that no-one would suggest look as if they’re headed for a retirement home.
With them was former Richmond footballer and tattoo parlour entrepreneur Jake King.
There is no suggestion the “Push-Up King” is or has ever been a patched member of the Mongols.
Nor is he Mongolian.
In rude health
He’s a young man who allegedly has a hot head and a nasty mouth.
When police picked him up from a bus stop recently out west, he launched into a tirade of abuse about their appearance and made some uncouth health tips.
The suspect now has a big opportunity to show those coppers how to get into shape.
He’ll have a free prison gym membership as he waits to see how the slow-turning wheels of justice handle his alleged involvement in a homicide, among other matters.
Mafia was chips in
Our colleague Craig Dunlop reported a while back on a bloke who had lost millions after his ill-gotten cryptocurrency gains were seized by police.
Small-time drug dealer Nicholas Harvey Raymond had watched his Bitcoin stash balloon to an $18.9 million fortune over the years, only to have the cops swoop when he tried to cash in.
These days, organised crime funny-money is increasingly about crypto and other mysterious concealment practices.
Thirty years ago, casino chips were about as exotic as things got for crooks.
One source tells us the chips were a highly popular currency with Italian organised crime figures from the Footscray market back in the 1990s.
Back then, the market was a lively place. Heaven help those who made the mistake of arguing over a parking space with the Mafia types who roamed the stalls.
Wander into the wrong area out the back and you could find gangland enforcer Victor Peirce test-firing a machine gun.
When I was your age
Two high-ranking police recently embarked on some kind of fact-finding trip to the United States.
One is more than a decade younger than the other so imagine his disgust when someone at a hotel innocently referred to the fresh-faced older colleague as his son.
On the other hand, nothing could measure the delight of his apparently ageless boss.
A matter of time
There was no surprise from some when a well-known face recently found himself under arrest over most serious matters.
Those who’d been in contact with him in the period before police made their move knew it was very much on the cards.
Describing his condition as erratic would be an understatement.
Doctor who cut wife’s throat with kitchen knife won’t face criminal charges
A doctor who sliced open his dead wife’s throat and waited more than three hours to call an ambulance won’t be charged after detectives found there was “insufficient evidence” to secure a conviction.
Questions linger 12 months on from Gavin Preston’s very public murder
It’s been 12 months since standover man Gavin Preston was gunned down in broad daylight at a busy Keilor cafe and there’s still much we don’t know about his very public killing.