How prison cell warning to client earned Andrew Fraser powerful enemies

Police recorded Fraser growling an expletive-laden warning to a client tied to the accused Walsh St cop killers — and it earned him powerful enemies.

Andrew Fraser was a streetwise crime lawyer who spoke to his clients in the brutal, colourful and sometimes obscene slang of the street and police cell.

One such outburst, directed at a suspect in the Walsh St shooting of two young policemen, made Fraser the enemy of Victoria Police and something of a pariah in upper echelons of his profession.

Fraser avoids discussing the terrible details of the Walsh St shootings but defends his role in representing the group accused of the worst crime in Australian law enforcement since the Kelly Gang massacred three police at Stringybark Creek in 1878.

Two hours before dawn on October 12, 1988, young constables Damian Eyre and Steve Tynan were executed at point blank range while investigating an abandoned Commodore sedan deliberately left as “bait” in the middle of Walsh St, South Yarra.

Damian Eyre and Steven Tynan were shot dead in Walsh St, South Yarra. Picture: Herald Sun

Police and the public were horrified and enraged by the double murder, and fear and hatred of the suspected killers spilled over to include anyone associated with them — including their lawyer.

Fraser says it was his blunt and explicit warning to a young “fringe dweller” linked to the main suspects that earned him permanent enemies in the force, and some influential critics in the legal profession.

It happened when he visited the youth, Anthony Farrell, in the City Watch House cells after his arrest with his friend Jason Ryan, teenage nephew of prime Walsh St suspect Victor Peirce.

Police recorded Fraser growling an expletive-laden warning to Farrell, the son of a drug-addicted former boxer, part of the criminal underclass from birth and of limited intelligence.

Fraser told the frightened Farrell exactly what any competent defence lawyer would and should have told him — that his right to silence was the only protection against being tied into a crime perpetrated by others that could see him jailed for the rest of his life.

Fraser knew that Farrell and his friend Jason Ryan, just 17, were weak links who might be intimidated into signing statements designed to incriminate the hardened criminals that detectives were sure had committed the murders.

Fraser told Farrell that the sentences for anyone convicted over the shooting would be a “f……g monster” and to keep his mouth shut.

With the 34th anniversary of the Walsh St killings this month, Fraser is still firm that he gave the right legal advice to a vulnerable and weak client, who is now dead.

A police memorial to commemorate the 1988 murders of Constables Steve Tynan and Damian Eyre. Picture: Janine Eastgate

“I might have said ‘f…’ too much but the advice was impeccable.”

Fraser resents the criticism of the late Justice Norman O’Bryan, who attacked him subsequently in court for “disgraceful” language in briefing his client.

“As usual, O’Bryan was more worried about appearances than what actually mattered,” Fraser says.

Fraser still believes that the police wrecked their chance of a successful prosecution of the Walsh St killers by first assuming they knew who had done it — then building a case around their best guess.

“What they should have done is identified the crime and followed the evidence to see which way it pointed, then built the case from the ground up,” he said.

“If it had been done properly then Jedd Houghton and Victor Peirce would probably have been charged and convicted. What you don’t do is just get hold of Anthony Farrell and give him a shocking time and hope he tips over.”

Fraser’s criticism of police “shortcuts” in the Walsh St investigation, which ultimately failed in court (when Victor Peirce’s wife Wendy doublecrossed police by withdrawing key evidence at the last minute), reinforces his scathing assessment of the police shooting that caused the double murder.

That was the shooting of armed robber Graeme Jensen in his car outside a mower shop in Narre Warren the day before the Walsh St murders. Armed robbery squad detectives ambushed Jensen and shot him dead after he bought a spark plug.

A police surveillance officer who watched the shooting later swore an affidavit that he saw a detective carry a sawn-off .22 rifle covered in a towel and drop it in the car at Jensen’s feet.

Internal investigators were told much later that when the detectives realised the sawn-off “throwaway” was jammed and inoperable, they had allegedly told a fellow cop to bring another gun from St Kilda Rd police headquarters, but when that man arrived he was unwilling to deliver the weapon in front of news cameras and onlookers.

Jensen’s violent death set off the Walsh St tragedy.

His fellow robbers in what was known as the Flemington crew, including Victor Peirce and the vicious Peter “Bubble Brain” McEvoy and Jedd Houghton, were locked in an escalating vendetta with the armed robbery squad. They had vowed to kill two police officers for every one of their own shot by police.

Within 18 hours, the sinister promise came true at Walsh St. But it wasn’t the trigger-happy armed robbery squad detectives who were ambushed, it was two young recruits in uniform picked at random.

Detective Robert Hill was later charged with Jensen’s murder but was acquitted at trial in 1995 and would become an assistant commissioner.

Just as in the case against the Walsh St accused that had finished with acquittals in 1991, a jury decided there was not enough evidence to convict the accused detective of murdering Jensen. The sword of justice is double-edged.