Deadline: Seedy St Kilda nightclub the Palace so hot it caught fire

Seedy St Kilda nightclub the Palace was once run by a drug-dealing reptile who had a pack of bent cops on tap as well as watery beer.

The Palace nightclub in St Kilda was demolished in 2007 after it was gutted by a suspicious fire.

Andrew Rule with the latest scallywag scuttlebutt.

The Palace, so hot it caught fire

A recent podcast series by former undercover cop Lachlan McCulloch has stirred up memories of the rats’ nest that was the Palace nightclub in St Kilda, a home-away-from-home for crime squad police in the good ol’ days.

The Palace was run, at the peak of its time as a strip joint, by drug-dealing reptile and convicted criminal Peter Pilarinos, who had a pack of bent cops on tap as well as watery beer.

A former schoolmate recalls knocking around with the three Pilarinos brothers in Collingwood when they went to Fitzroy High.

That was before the Pilarinos boys’ hardworking migrant parents got out of the notorious Housing Commission flats to a new home on the other side of the river, which meant at least one of the boys went to Camberwell High.

It was the start of a rapid rise that led to Peter living in a monster house in Doncaster East.

Peter Pilarinos outside the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court in 1998.

Another correspondent recalls that before Pilarinos took over the Palace, it was notionally run by a flash woman understood to be the girlfriend of a mysterious bearded man.

One night when there was an ugly incident in the club — if not a shooting then a stabbing, at least — the bearded man turned up, flashed a “freddie” (police badge) at uniformed police and ordered them to leave it to him. Which, after what the witness calls “a strange Mexican stand-off,” they did.

Another night, he recalls, “I was standing a few metres away after a patron was ejected and had returned with a pistol — fake, but we didn’t know at the time — and this detective had his gun cocked and under the evicted bloke’s chin. He said later if the bloke with the fake gun had flinched he would have pulled the trigger.”

Then there were the nights when the local police “divvy van” would be loaded with complimentary slabs of beer. Police had only to “flash freddie” to get free entry and drink cards.

“I was there the night that Mad Dog Cox was arrested in the Doncaster Shopping Town Shootout and there were the Armed Robbery crew proudly showing me Polaroid pics of their catch of the day!”

It was in some ways the end of an era when, by wonderful luck, the Palace burned down years later. Perhaps it was the same faceless arsonist who torched the old St Moritz ice skating rink, also in the Esplanade.

It is apparently a highly flammable stretch of real estate.

Murphy’s law: Don’t get caught

Brian Francis Murphy’s presumed progress through the Pearly Gates is still sparking interest among his fellow former cops (and maybe a few crooks) a week after he tapped the mat.

For some reason, people are now recalling little snippets they’d misplaced for years.

One former detective tells Deadline that when he was in uniform at St Kilda police station, in charge of files, he was dismayed to be handed the tricky job of telling “Skull” Murphy’s aged mother she could no longer hold a driver’s licence.

The station boss, a senior officer, warned the young cop to call Murphy at Russell St and square it with him. This was character building stuff, as everyone was nervous of the tough sergeant’s reputation.

It turned out for the best. When Murphy took the call, he said he was privately relieved that his aged mother would no longer be driving. If there was one person Murphy was respectful of, apart from priests and nuns, it was his dear old ma, a Port Melbourne matriarch.

And so it was that Murphy graciously “gave permission” for the licence withdrawal. Which proves that he wielded an astonishing amount of clout for a supposedly lowly sergeant.

Former Policman Brian 'The Skull' Murphy died last week.

It explains why, when the polite St Kilda cop in question was promoted to detective at Russell St, Murphy gave him six mint copies of official Victoria Police Notebooks.

Murphy’s explanation to the slightly alarmed detective was that it was just in case he ever had to rewrite a notebook with a new and different set of “facts” for the purposes of giving evidence.

That would be to “brick” a suspect with false evidence, or to evade being prosecuted for breaking police regulations, if not the law.

Where Murphy got the notebooks was not discussed. If they were not direct from a secret source at the Government Printer, then perhaps they were from some even more senior cop, high in the food chain.

Interestingly, no one has ever been able to provide first hand proof that Murphy was personally corrupt, only hearsay.

A common theory among his contemporaries seems to be that any dirty money that fell his way might have been “repurposed” by the Catholic Church, possibly for good works like missions and charities.

That’s a mystery unlikely to be solved now he’s with the angels.

The blackest mark against Murphy, perhaps, was his close connection with notoriously bent cop, bash-artist, rapist and standover man Paul William Higgins.

A little-known fact is that Higgins was probably the last Victorian police officer forbidden under the regulations from getting married to a person of ill-repute, a discretionary power once wielded by Chief Commissioners to protect the force’s reputation.

The woman in question was heavily involved in the illegal sex industry, not to mention drugs. A dangerous racket unless you had a bent cop in bed with you.

Bang, bang! the Punisher’s back

Sam “The Punisher” Abdulrahim might sulk if we don’t call him an underworld identity, given his spectacular survival after being sprayed with bullets when ambushed in his car after a funeral at Fawkner cemetery last year.

If eight bullet holes right across your chest tattoos don’t earn gangster cred, nothing does.

Now Sam is back to his day job, pro boxing, in a comeback fight that ought be headlined Back From The Dead.

As news hound Brianna Travers reports, Abdulrahim returns to the ring against Fijian Filimoni Naliva Jr on May 6 at Q Room in Thomastown.

Sam “The Punisher” Abdulrahim will return to professional boxing ring against Fijian Filimoni Naliva Jr. Picture: Supplied

Spectators expected to study Sam’s footwork include, naturally, bikie identities such as Toby Mitchell, Mark Balsillie and Jason Addison, plus members of Melbourne’s Middle Eastern organised crime network.

Trainer, manager and promoter Pierre Karam says his fighter’s recovery from being shot is hot stuff.

“He’s coming back with a bang,” Karam told Travers. Let’s hope that’s just a figure of speech.

Karam is a former sparring partner of American professional boxer Thomas Hearns. Whose ring name, of course, was “Hitman” Hearns.

Adios, A. Dowsley

Unlike most of the characters he writes about, Herald Sun crime reporter Anthony Dowsley hasn’t had to die to have stories told about him this week. He has merely changed jobs — and cities.

Dowsley, enormously popular with those who don’t hate him, has nailed quite a reputation in his chosen field since graduating from cats-up-trees as a cub reporter in the outer suburbs.

A leaked version of Herald Sun weekend editor Nick Papps’s farewell-to-Dowsley address has some interesting details.

Such as the night he met a volatile and almost certainly well-armed gangland figure at Young & Jacksons pub. Dowsley’s only “security” was fellow hack Kelvin Healey, sitting on an adjacent table practising his famous blank stare, compulsory for all budding editors.

All three survived the sit-down. Healey is now editor of The Australian. The gangster is flexing his trigger finger after a long stint inside. And Dowsley is heading to Sin City in the pursuit of love.

Then there was the night Dowsley decided to meet prolific and evil contract killer Rodney “The Duke” Collins, who lied that he had a photograph to sell.

There were other, more seedy, adventures but if they are revealed, Dowsley might lose his new job in the Harbour City before he even starts.

One yarn concerns a Dowsley female friend (for whom English was perhaps a third language) misunderstanding a police visit about a rapist suspected of 22 attacks around Richmond.

The truth was that the public-spirited Dowsley had earlier reported sighting the offender. But his female friend thought the friendly police were warning her that Dowsley was the rapist. The relationship never quite recovered.

There are other stories but they won’t be told here.