Deadline: The Melbourne landlord taking rental stress to a new level

Knowing when to speak up and when to keep your mouth shut is a valuable life lesson, which is especially relevant if you’re behind on your rent and your landlord is a notorious gangster.

The tenant picked the wrong landlord to deliver his tenant’s writes diatribe.

Mark Buttler and Andrew Rule with the latest crime buzz.

You’d have to be rental

It pays to know when to keep your mouth shut. An example of a good time and place for that would be a meeting to discuss rent arrears with a scary underworld figure who happens also to be a landlord.

Not so for a risk-taking tenant who some time ago turned up to ask for some breathing space during tough financial times.

The landlord is not a man publicly associated with shows of compassion. More the opposite, in fact.

But he was quite understanding about the renter’s plight and prepared to make allowances, we’re told.

Unfortunately, his tolerance was mistaken for something else. Because the resident decided for some bizarre reason to jack him up with a tenant’s rights diatribe.

The landlord, an ice-cool bloke linked through a colourful past to most of the offences in the Crimes Act, had a change of heart and made it clear the debt would be paid in full.

Fair enough, too. Some people don’t know to quit when they’re ahead.

Digraced lawyer gets sandpaper treatment

Time was when ice-smoking lawyer Pat Lennon was a man for all seasons.

He not only sexually propositioned women he met while representing them during Family Court proceedings, and knocked around with underworld figures and rogue jockeys, but he also had a lot to do with Caulfield Cricket Club.

In fact, our spies tell us, his name was for some years etched on the club’s honour board of the great and the good and others associated with the game at suburban level.

Not any more, say the same spies. The Lennon name has been painstakingly removed from the honour board following his complete disgrace and then surrender his lawyer’s practising certificate.

It was the Herald Sun’s investigative reporter Ben Butler who nailed Lennon earlier this year, when two women described being enticed into controlling and abusive sexual relationships with the then lawyer while a third said she had rebuffed his “sleazy” advances.

Butler’s excellent report highlighted not only that Lennon admitted abusing methamphetamines but the intriguing fact that complaints about his gross misconduct had for a long time fallen on deaf ears at the legal regulator.

This was despite such graphic evidence as Lennon’s text to one frightened woman client: “I own you now so u need to do as I say — that includes in the bedroom.”

What a prince. No wonder Caulfield Cricket Club decided to do what the legal regulator did not: give Lizard Lennon the big A.

Patrick Lennon shows his displeasure at a photographer’s attention outside Melbourne Magistrates’ Court. Picture: Jake Nowakowski

Jailhouse blues

There are rumours of troubled times for one new maximum security inmate.

The fellow was locked up a little while back for some ridiculous gunplay in Melbourne’s western suburbs.

Unfortunately for him, the authorities didn’t let him hang onto his shooter when he was thrown into the big house.

Word is he was quickly bashed, allegedly by members of the G-Fam outfit, which has emerged in recent years as the heaviest gang force behind bars.

Carroll on the move

Former Victoria Police homicide investigator Sean Carroll, who has more recently been involved in racing integrity, is making the move to Tasmania.

The detective recently announced his resignation as Victoria’s Racing Integrity Commissioner, a post in which he replaced Sal Perna back in 2021.

He had previously been the head of integrity and security at Cricket Australia, where he was credited with developing an integrity framework for the code.

Carroll will start his new duties as Tasmania’s racing integrity commissioner in mid-December.

Ain’t nothin but a hound doggy

The recent Blue Ribbon Foundation Ball in Crown’s Palladium room attracted a big crowd and brought in a lot of money for a worthy cause.

Plenty of top brass were there in their finest, mixing with guests from all walks of life in what is traditionally a restrained evening of dinner and drinks before some dancing to live entertainment.

Loosening the night up after a while was Supt. Paul “Doggy” O’Halloran who hit the stage to bust out some full-tilt moves while belting out Suspicious Minds.

The performance was something of a highlight at the event.

Would you taser your Granny?

The case of the pudgy cop found guilty of manslaughter after he managed to kill a tiny 95-year-woman by calmly zapping her with a taser in a Cooma nursing home last year should be shown to recruits at every police academy in the world.

The theme of that lecture would be something like: regardless of the regulations, sometimes you should use discretion. If you can’t understand long words like “discretion” then try “common sense.”

Kristian White leaves the NSW Supreme Court on Wednesday after being found guilty of manslaughter. Picture: Nikki Short

Maybe just try to imagine whether you’d think it was a good idea to taser (or shoot, or baton, or choke hold, or body slam) a small, frail person if that person was one of your own relatives. Would you want someone else in authority to treat your loved one that way?

If the answer is “No”, then probably don’t do it.

Step back, close the door, grab a broom or a mop or a doona to distract or disarm them. Or, in the case of poor, old, demented Mrs Clare Nowland in Cooma, wait five minutes and offer to make her a cup of tea.

Put it away

It can’t be nice to become the victim of a serious, life-altering crime.

That said (if the rumours are true) there really is no excuse for a man sending photos of his member to women of his recent acquaintance.

That will be all.