Jason Roberts never gave up hope of being freed from prison

Jason Roberts says he never gave up hope he’d eventually walk free from jail: “The saying goes, the truth will set you free. But leave out the part it will take 22 years.”

Jason Roberts was meant to die in jail.

He was a convicted police killer facing a life sentence, so it seemed no one was willing to listen to his pleas of innocence.

In new podcast The Devil’s Apprentice, Roberts tells how he fell under the malignant influence of the manipulative and evil Bandali Debs, standing by him even though he knew his father-figure had killed two police officers.

Both Roberts and Debs, a serial killer, were convicted in 2002 of the 1998 murders of Sergeant Gary Silk and Senior Constable Rodney Miller.

Years after the four-month trial, Roberts would help launch a reinvestigation into his conviction from his prison cell.

Help came from the most unlikely of places: the agencies which prosecuted him.

In December, 2012, the then Director of Public Prosecutions, John Champion, called a meeting.

At that meeting were two of his senior lawyers and a decorated homicide cop, Ron Iddles. The meeting ignited a decade-long investigation that ultimately led back to court.

It was an ugly business that would engulf Victoria Police, the state’s anti-corruption body, IBAC, politicians, journalists and a justice system that seemed to have been hoodwinked first time around.

It would set cop against cop, divide the police “brotherhood”, fracture friendships and expose corrupt practices.

Iddles tells The Devil’s Apprentice he could not have known what his investigation would find.

“I remember the day that I signed that report to say he might not have been there I knew I was going to get blowback,” Iddles tells the podcast.

“In other words, I basically signed my death warrant.”

But Iddles said he took an oath when he joined the force to investigate without fear or favour.

“I never expected when I started this review I would uncover anything.”

But the tenacious cop’s reinvestigation led to a retrial last year.

The Herald Sun’s true crime podcast takes listeners inside a series of investigations which resulted in two trials and two verdicts, two decades apart.

And it takes you inside Jason Roberts’ 22-year fight to be freed for a crime he has always insisted he did not commit.

Roberts tells of feeling numb when charged with the high-profile Silk-Miller murders in August, 2000, following an intensive two year police hunt.

“Shock, disbelief,” he tells the podcast.

“I hadn’t done it ... Like, what are you doing?

“And then you have this false sense of, like a security blanket, thinking, well the justice system, it will be all right.

“I was young and naive, I’m thinking, well, once it gets to the courts, the courts will see I haven’t done this and I will go home.

Jason Roberts after being found guilty of the crime in 2002.

Roberts after being found not guilty in 2022. Picture: David Caird

“But clearly, that didn’t happen at court (in 2002).”

Roberts says he never gave up hope after being jailed alongside Debs, the man he describes as a “psycho”.

Debs’ guilt over the Silk-Miller murders has never been in question. Only whether he acted alone, as he had acted in at least two other murders he committed.

Roberts tells the podcast he went into “fight mode” after he was imprisoned.

“You’re fighting for your life,” he said.

“The saying goes, the truth will set you free. But leave out the part it will take f---in’ 22 years.”

The Devil’s Apprentice also poses questions about the 24-year saga which still reverberate.

Roberts was 17 at the time of the Silk-Miller shootings. In the lead-up to the double murder, the teen had been Debs’ sidekick in a series of armed robberies and the then unknown pair were being hunted as the mystery “Hamada” bandits terrorising Melbourne’s east and south east.

Officers Silk and Miller were fatally wounded while on a stake-out to catch the two robbers.

The two police were ambushed on Cochranes Rd, Moorabbin, in the minutes after midnight on August 16, 1998.

The scene of the murders of Gary Silk and Rodney Miller in Moorabbin. Picture: Andrew Batsch

They were fired on shortly after pulling over a blue Hyundai in Cochranes Rd, Moorabbin, after following a car that had been driven in and out of the Silky Emperor Chinese restaurant carpark.

A taskforce dubbed Lorimer would prove the Hyundai belonged to Debs’ daughter, Nicole, and that their colleagues were fired upon with two handguns, which suggested either two gunmen, or one gunman with two guns.

But witnesses, including a back-up police crew who drove by the scene moments before the gunfire erupted, saw only one offender.

The Silk-Miller case has heroism, heartache, brilliant Detective work and its opposite: critical mistakes, shortcuts and corruption.

It remains one of the most polarising cases in Australian crime history.

The podcast examines the adrenaline-filled moments when police reacted to the shootings. And an investigation which used unorthodox tactics to provoke conversations as they listened on wiretaps.

It also delves into the dying words of officer Miller, which would become his “dying declaration”, helping bolster the “two shooter” theory.

Police would allege he uttered the words, “Two ... one on foot.”

But police would fabricate evidence surrounding officer Miller’s words, which was unravelled by a Herald Sun investigation.

The podcast also airs previously secret details about Roberts’ alibi at the time of the shootings, never put before a court.

These gripping accounts go to the heart of Roberts’ claim of innocence.